


there by your side

by espressohno



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Domestic Fluff, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Near Death Experiences, Semi-Public Sex, Sharing a Bed, Slow Build, Slow Burn, four whole chapters devoted to pavel's backstory even though nobody asked for it, hikaru's family is a sitcom waiting to happen, put the kettle on because this fic spans eight years of story, strap the fuck in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 18:23:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 39
Words: 82,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19115182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/espressohno/pseuds/espressohno
Summary: Pavel was, to put it simply, a complete mess.This couldn’t really be remedied by the fact that he was probably the smartest person Hikaru had ever met. If he wasn’t at the top of all of his classes, he was sure as hell going to be by the end of the semester.He was also fifteen fucking years old.EXTREMELY slow build/slow burn chulu fic that starts with the two of them being roommates at the academy. because i love these two so much that i wrote a goddamn book.(mckirk is only referenced in this fic, the primary ship is chekov/sulu)





	1. chapter one: year one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO just real quick before we get started, I want to give my endless gratitude to C my amazing cheerleader and motivator and farm wife and the person responsible for keeping me going. I promise to write you as much spones as I can after this to show my thanks

Growing up in San Francisco, where practically every public school took their kids on annual field trips to tour Starfleet Academy, Hikaru hadn’t expected to have his mind blown when he started attending. And he wasn’t. Mostly he was just stressed about the fact that everyone in his class was way too fucking smart. He thought he was pretty clever, before, clever enough that his acceptance to Starfleet wasn’t a surprise, but once he was dropped into a completely different crowd, he found himself feeling completely and utterly average. 

That pretty much started from day one. 

He walked into his dorm for the second time that day, praying that he’d be alone in there again. The first time, when he came back in between classes, the room was empty. He still hadn’t met his roommate, but the guy had left his luggage strewn about his side of the room, some of the bags wide open and clearly torn apart like he had been looking for something, which made Hikaru cringe. He wasn’t really excited to meet whoever it was, based solely on his organizational skills. He was also pretty much in the worst mood possible to make a first impression. He was overwhelmed and his head hurt and he was exhausted after an entire day of being fed too much information and feeling, on and off, like a complete idiot who shouldn’t have gotten in.  

The door to his room swished open after three tries of inputting the key code and the first thing his eyes found was his roommate--or at least, Hikaru assumed it was his roommate--sitting on the floor surrounded by a mess of electronics. 

So this was apparently going to be a thing with him, then. 

In lieu of actually introducing himself, Hikaru just said, 

“What are you doing.”

The guy didn’t look up from where he was apparently taking a pair of pliers to the wiring  _ inside of their bedroom wall _ , which was 100% against the rules, by the way. 

“Rewiring the room’s electronics so I can connect my gaming console to the central power instead of using the battery.” He spoke perfect English, but with a thick enough Russian accent that it still took a minute to understand him. 

“Doesn’t that violate like,” Hikaru thought for a minute, recounting the Starfleet handbook that he’d read cover to cover twice, “five different housing conduct rules.”

“Yes,” he said, still absorbed in the five housing conduct rules he was breaking. He looked up for just a second, so he could give Hikaru a look that was equivalent to  _ snitches are bitches _ , and then turned back. 

“Great,” Hikaru deadpanned. 

“My name is Pavel, by the way.” 

“Hikaru.” He was still standing just in front of the door, awkwardly, as if it wasn’t his room. 

Pavel didn’t look up again, somehow perfectly sure of what he was doing. He’d lost the jacket of his cadet uniform--Hikaru guessed he’d probably find it lying around somewhere it didn’t belong--and was sitting on the floor in his slacks and undershirt and some non-regulation blue striped socks. He looked young, too young, probably younger than Hikaru, and Hikaru was pretty sure that at eighteen years old he was the youngest Starfleet would admit. 

“I’m going to bed,” he said finally. Even though it couldn’t have been later than seven pm and Hikaru hadn’t even stopped for dinner on his way back to the dorms. He had realized, as soon as his bed was within view, that he wasn’t leaving his dorm again until he slept at least eight hours.  

“Okay. You can turn down the lights if you want.” 

That was the first real conversation the two of them had for a while. Mostly because their routines didn’t line up, even though their classes did. Hikaru’s mother had conditioned him into sleeping when it was dark outside, eating three meals a day, and exercising in the morning, and studying at the library, never in bed. 

If his mother met Pavel she probably would have a heart attack immediately. He seemed to only sleep when his body demanded it, taking naps in between classes and crashing halfway through study sessions at his desk. He sometimes ate constantly and sometimes didn’t eat all day, to the point where Hikaru had to suppress the urge to take on the role of Pavel’s mother himself. 

Pavel was, to put it simply, a complete mess.  

This couldn’t really be remedied by the fact that he was probably the smartest person Hikaru had ever met. If he wasn’t at the top of all of his classes, he was sure as hell going to be by the end of the semester. 

He was also fifteen fucking years old.

 

-

 

By the end of the fall term, Hikaru had actually learned a lot of things about Pavel Andreivich Chekov without having to spend very much waking time with him. Most importantly, those things included:

  1. Pavel was fifteen. _Fifteen_. Hikaru did some digging and found out that yes, technically there was a rule that stated that Starfleet applicants had to be eighteen years old by their first day of class. He still couldn’t for the life of him figure out how Pavel managed to get in. 
  2. Pavel actually broke the rules _all the time_. Their first day pretty much set a precedent for the rest of the term, with Hikaru walking in on Pavel doing something he wasn’t supposed to and Pavel giving him a look that inspired just enough terror for Hikaru not to tell on him. It was ridiculous, especially considering that Hikaru was three years older than him and Pavel had much more at stake. But it was never anything terrible; Pavel only hacked into the academy database to check his grades before they were released, and he only broke into campus buildings because he was so damn busy all day that he couldn’t fit in time to go to the gym or the labs, and the rewiring of their dorm’s electric system, Hikaru actually benefited from that a lot. Not only could he play virtual tennis whenever he wanted but Pavel had managed to install voice commands in all of their appliances, and some sort of bio-recognition shit that would change the lighting and the temperature based on who was in the room. It was actually really cool. So yeah, Hikaru didn’t ever tell on Pavel. He never really had the urge to. 
  3. Pavel’s family hadn’t taught him any sort of healthy lifestyle habits, because, well, they probably hadn’t taught him anything. In their four months of living together, Hikaru hadn’t once caught Pavel speaking to his family. It made his frequent video chats with his older sisters and visits to his parents’ house seem excessive. The thought left a bad taste in his mouth, but having a distant (possibly nonexistent) family really did explain a lot about Pavel’s behavior. 



 

And now, at the end of the semester and the beginning of their one month holiday break, Hikaru learned one more:

 

  1. Pavel wasn’t going home for the holidays. 



 

“All of the flights going into Russia were cancelled because of the storms, and probably the transport stations will be overloaded too. I was going to tell my family I could just wait a few days and book a different flight but when they said this was a great opportunity to get ahead in class.” Pavel shrugged, trying to sound casual, but Hikaru could tell that he wasn’t really thrilled about spending the holidays in his dorm room. “So I’ll just stay here.”

Hikaru was tempted to come up with some half-assed sympathy and leave it at that so he could catch the bus, but Pavel was literally about to spend the holidays alone. He was fifteen years old, for christ’s sake, practically still a child. There was no way he would enjoy a month of solitude during this time of year, on the opposite side of the world from his family. Even though Hikaru didn’t know much about him he had to at least try to help him out. 

Plus, the two of them might actually get to know each other when they were removed from the intensity of academy life. He went for it.

“If you want, you can come spend the holidays with my family.”

Pavel cocked his head to the side. 

“Would that not be weird for them?”

“Not really. People are gonna be coming in and out all month. The place will be packed.”

He looked like he was tempted to say no; that was probably the safest answer, after all. Hikaru wasn’t really expecting a yes in the first place, which is why he was surprised when Pavel finally nodded and said, 

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“Okay.” 

Hikaru sat on the edge of his bed while Pavel unpacked his suitcase for Russia and repacked it for the other side of San Francisco. 

“What does your family celebrate?” Pavel was pretty much just throwing things in the direction of his suitcase at this point. It was almost painful to watch. 

“Christmas,” Hikaru said, flinching as a pair of tennis shoes flew across the room and just barely missed Pavel’s PADD. 

“Alright. So do I.”

Hikaru didn’t miss the use of _ I  _ instead of  _ we _ . He wondered what Pavel was really missing by not going back to Russia. 

 

-

 

Hikaru’s family welcomed Pavel with literal open arms. He floundered around as about four different people gave  _ nice to meet you _ hugs and was only slightly less awkward with the half a dozen handshakes. Hikaru was able to stifle most of his laughter, but when the family cat rubbed against Pavel’s leg and he muttered  _ not you, too _ Hikaru absolutely lost it. He took Pavel into his old room so he could recover until even more people started showing up for dinner. 

“I’m afraid you’re going to tell me that wasn’t all of them.” Pavel slumped into the chair at Hikaru’s desk. 

“Just wait until my sisters get here.” 

“ _ Sisters? _ ” 

Normally Hikaru would be just as tired by now, but having someone to suffer with him ended up making everything more enjoyable. 

Pavel rummaged through his backpack and pulled out his PADD, no doubt looking for some extra credit assignment he could spend all of his time here working on. 

“If it’s too much you can always catch the bus back to the Academy,” Hikaru said, because he felt like he had to. 

“No, I’ll survive.” 

At that Hikaru smiled, because even though Pavel was clearly out of his comfort zone here, he must have really,  _ really _ wanted to get out of his dorm. 

It was going to be a long, weird, and potentially fun, holiday break. 


	2. chapter two: year one

His sisters weren’t coming home for another week at least, which meant that Hikaru was stuck between awkward conversations with his relatives that he only saw once a year and awkward conversations with Pavel. After a few days the two options were equally matched. 

Pavel spent most of his time in Hikaru’s room, doing god knows what and only coming down for meals. After a lot of nagging from both parents to _ make your friend feel at home  _ and  _ help him get out of his shell _ Hikaru gave up and went to find Pavel. 

He was slouched over Hikaru’s desk, doing some sort of nerd shit that Hikaru didn’t want to look at for longer than it took to recognize that he was using a fucking  _ soldering iron _ in Hikaru’s  _ bedroom.  _ Pavel looked up. It was weird seeing him in civvies like this, especially because his cadet uniform made him look a lot older, like he could almost pass for eighteen. When he wore sweaters and blue jeans it made it a lot more obvious that he was only a teenager. 

“Hi,” Pavel said, glancing innocently down at the soldering iron in his hand. At that point he might have realized that he was maybe doing something he shouldn’t. 

“Hey.” Hikaru cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Do you need something?” 

“Yeah. Let’s go ice skating.” 

“Ice skating?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

After another ten minutes of Pavel trying to come up with reasons not to go, he finally agreed. More than just the way he dressed outside of the Academy, spending actual time with Pavel was a consistent reminder of how young he actually was. Behind his crazy intelligence was the insecurity--and occasional immaturity--that would be expected from someone his age. Hikaru leaned against the doorway while Pavel put his shoes on and grumbled something about not even knowing how to ice skate. 

“Aren’t you from Russia?”

Pavel looked up at him. 

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You know, Russia...” Hikaru waved his hand absently, leading the way downstairs once Pavel looked ready to go. “They have ice there, right?”

“Right,” Pavel deadpanned. He followed Hikaru like a shadow through the house. “In Russia everything is ice. We actually ice skate to our destinations instead of walking.” 

Hikaru laughed. They managed to talk during the entire bus ride to Union Square. Most of their conversation was about their academics, of course, but it was still an improvement to their previous state of weird, near-silent cohabitation. By the time they got to the ice rink Pavel looked like he might actually be enjoying himself. 

But then he was putting his skates on, and clearly remembering that he doesn’t know how to ice skate. The teenage insecurity and hesitation was back in full force as he carefully slid into the rink behind Hikaru. 

Hikaru was actually really good at ice skating. He was one of those kids who’d cycled through half a dozen different sports before he ended up on his high school fencing team, ice skating being one of them. Whatever was still leftover in his memory from his years of skating classes meant he could glide comfortably into the rink, circling around a few times while Pavel shakily held on to the edge. 

“Want some pointers?” He asked, skating to an easy stop the next time he passed Pavel in the rink. 

“I don’t need help.” Pavel sniffed. His nose and cheeks were already pink even though it was barely cold enough to wear a coat outside. He tried to push himself off of the edge and immediately lost balance, hopping and slipping from one foot to another until he scrambled to grab hold of the wall again. Hikaru just watched him in amusement. 

“Okay,” he panted, leaning until the wall of the rink was basically supporting his entire body, “I will take some help.”

Hikaru skated slowly next to him, demonstrating again and again the right leg movements. Once Pavel started to look more confident, only trailing one hand along the edge, Hikaru grabbed his other hand and pulled him away from the wall. 

Pavel held onto Hikaru’s arm with both hands, almost to the point where he worried about his circulation. But just like before, he slowly started to warm up to it. They skated together for a while, with Pavel’s hand loose around Hikaru’s bicep. Pavel’s movements became less and less shaky, more and more smooth and even a little graceful. He was a fast learner. 

Finally Hikaru figured he could make it on his own. 

“Alright, I think you’re good now. You can let go of my arm.”

“You’re sure?” 

“Yeah, totally. Just keep the same rhythm.” 

Pavel nodded and cautiously let go of Hikaru. He quickly found his balance on his own, smiling to himself once he was skating comfortably. But Hikaru unintentionally sped up now that he wasn’t towing a lanky fifteen year old behind him, and Pavel must have assumed that it meant they were racing. 

He tried to catch up, lengthening his strides. Hikaru watched as it actually worked for a few seconds. And then he slipped and fell on his ass. 

He should’ve waited to gauge Pavel’s reaction, to see if he was hurt or embarrassed or needed help getting back up, but instead Hikaru just burst into laughter. 

Pavel squinted at him, and before Hikaru could ask if he needed any help Pavel was stumbling back to his feet. He started skating again, eyes still locked on Hikaru as Hikaru got his laughter out. And then he was going faster. 

And then he was literally hurling his body towards Hikaru. Hikaru had the sense to move out of the way, but not enough sense to turn down the challenge. The two of them broke into some bastardized version of ice derby, trying to push each other off balance as they moved around the rink. Hikaru kept laughing and Pavel was apparently packing a lot of energy in his tiny body because he seemed to only get faster every time he fell over. 

It all ended when Pavel crashed into Hikaru and sent them both in the direction of a crowd of children on a field trip, causing about a twenty person pile up in the middle of the rink. 

And then it ended with the two of them photographed and indefinitely banned from ice skating in Union Square. 

They laughed the entire way home, covered in bruises and wet from falling on the ice and so sore they could barely walk from the bus station to the house. 

Hikaru’s mother asked what was so funny when they came inside and they only laughed harder. 

 

-

 

After that day they started to qualify as friends, in Hikaru’s opinion. It became increasingly easier to get Pavel out of the house and he took him on a native’s tour of San Francisco, which pretty much consisted of the most obscure stores and the best graffiti and occasionally an actual landmark. 

They got a stranger to take their picture in front of the Golden Gate Bridge (to which Pavel’s reaction was “It’s red. It’s not golden. It’s red. I was so angry when I found out four months ago. I will always be angry about this.”) and none of the pictures turned out good, but one of them turned out  _ perfect _ , with Hikaru squinting at the sun and almost grimacing and Pavel mid-laugh with half of his body blurred from movement. 

 

-

 

By Friday the number of people in the house had reached the point of it being a fire code violation, which meant it was finally time for the highly-anticipated Sulu Family Holiday Party. It also meant Hikaru’s sisters were home. Keeping with tradition, Yuki showed up with her girlfriend  _ du jour  _ and Aiko brought her three roommates. 

Hikaru and Pavel positioned themselves next to the (thankfully unlit) fireplace in the living room. Pavel had struck up a conversation with one of Aiko’s roommates, who was apparently also a supergenius. Hikaru was pretty sure her name was Alina. It was interesting, seeing him be social like this, especially to someone almost ten years older than him, but he must have found some sort of comfort in the conversation topic, which, during the few seconds Hikaru spent attempting to listen, sounded like quantum mechanics. 

He scanned the crowd for another young person to talk to, because every conversation with an adult relative so far had been a test on how well he can pretend that Starfleet isn’t hard as fuck and that his classmates don’t make him feel like an idiot on the regular. 

He caught eyes with Yuki and she smiled and walked over, picking up two sodas from one of the dozens of fold-out tables scattered around the first floor. 

“Hey.” She said, passing him a can. He opened it, only a little bit of overflow dripping onto his hand. 

“Hey. How’s college.”

“Gross. Don’t make me answer that.” Yuki would be twenty soon, but the older they got the less their age difference seemed to matter. Their relationship had lost a lot of its sibling aspects in the last few months and had started to feel more like a friendship. A friendship where the two of them knew way too much about each other. 

They stood in silence for a minute, drinking soda and glancing around the room. Hikaru spotted Yuki’s girlfriend looking cornered by the well-meaning but intimidating Mr. and Mrs. Sulu, which happened to every girlfriend every time Yuki came to visit. He watched as Aiko caught on and headed towards the three of them on a rescue mission, which also happened every time. 

“That your boyfriend?” Yuki suddenly asked, and Hikaru cocked his head to the side.

“What?” He tried to think of who she could have been referring to, especially considering he was standing there alone, save for Pavel absorbed in his own conversation a few feet away. Oh.  _ Oh. _ She was talking about Pavel, wasn’t she. 

“The cute Russian whiz kid,” she clarified, maybe a little too loud. 

“No. No, he’s not--he’s my roommate.”

“Oh.” Yuki almost looked disappointed. 

Hikaru leaned a little closer. Even surrounded by the noise of twenty different conversations and constant activity in the kitchen and Christmas music coming from god knows where, he felt the need to keep his bitching private. 

“He’s fifteen fucking years old.”

“ _ What? _ ”

“Yeah.”

“Starfleet doesn’t admit fifteen year olds.”

“I know.” 

He was about to say something else about how he’s looked into it all semester and can’t figure out how the fuck Pavel managed to enroll but then Yuki was looking up and then she was  _ waving Pavel over to them _ . 

“He just told me you’re  _ fifteen _ ,” she said, picking up one of her old habits of throwing Hikaru under the fucking bus all the time. 

Hikaru expected to see Pavel freeze up, like he so often did when he was singled out, but instead he just nodded, slowly, like his head was a little too heavy. 

“That’s me.” 

“That makes you the youngest student to ever enroll in Starfleet, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Hikaru said, and Pavel glanced over at him. 

“I didn’t even know that.” Pavel breathed out a laugh, “How do you know that.”

“I was trying to figure out how you were able to enroll so I did some research. It was a dead end. I still don’t know.”

“You could have asked.” Pavel smiled, and Hikaru noticed that he looked almost sleepy. “Although most people don’t believe me when I tell them.” 

“Oh I wanna hear this.” Yuki slung an arm around Hikaru’s shoulders, leaning on him with at least half of her bodyweight. The two of them stared at Pavel, waiting for him to continue. He started talking as if he was already bored. He watched them, silently, for a few seconds, maybe to build up tension to the big reveal:

“I applied,” he said. 

“You applied,” Hikaru repeated.

“That’s the whole story?” Yuki looked about as confused as Hikaru felt. That couldn’t be the end of it. 

“That’s the story.” Pavel sniffed, looked down at the glass in his hand. “There’s alcohol in this, I think.”

“Are you drinking the eggnog?” Yuki laughed, “Oh my god, Hikaru, did you not tell him about the eggnog? How much have you had?”

“This is my thi--no, fourth glass. I’ve had four.”

“Hikaru!” Yuki stopped leaning on him so she could punch his arm. 

“How is this my fault?”

“My face feels really warm is that supposed to happen.” 

Yuki looked back and forth between Pavel and Hikaru, eventually giving up and just laughing again. Pavel started laughing with her, and it came out weird and breathy and god, he actually was drunk, wasn’t he. 

“Okay, never mind the fact that Pavel is drunk off his ass. You applied and they just...let you in?”

“That’s right.” 

Hikaru crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’re right. I don’t buy it.” 

“ _ You _ applied and they let you in.”

“Yeah, but I’m eighteen. Starfleet doesn’t just make exceptions to rules like that.”

Pavel shrugged. He raised his glass up to his mouth and Yuki reached out and took it from his hand. 

“I think you’ve had enough, champ.” 

“They didn’t make an exception to the rule for me,” Pavel mumbled. “The rule doesn’t apply to transfers.” 

Hikaru vaguely noticed Yuki walking off with Pavel’s half-empty glass of eggnog, probably looking for her girlfriend to make sure she’s surviving. But most of his focus was on Pavel, because finally getting the answer to one of his semester-long questions was only made better by the fact that Pavel was probably the drunkest he had been in his life. He couldn’t have been more than 100 pounds, and Hikaru’s aunt was always testing how much rum she could put in the eggnog before she stopped getting invited to Christmases. Hikaru realized that he probably needed to keep his eye on Pavel the rest of the night. 

“You were a transfer?”

“Yes. Russian Space Academy.”

“You got into the  _ Russian Space Academy _ ?”

“And that’s...the part people don’t believe. They admitted me when I was thirteen. Can I sit down? I want to sit down.” Pavel tried to sit down where he was and Hikaru grabbed his arm to pull him back up.  _ Maybe 100 pounds was a little generous _ . 

“Okay, yeah, we’re gonna go sit down somewhere that’s not the floor.”

“I’m drunk,” Pavel said, letting Hikaru guide him through the house as he scanned for a free couch. He leaned his head against Hikaru’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, I know.” Hikaru rolled his eyes. He was definitely going to laugh about this with aunt Mariko once he was done babysitting a drunk fifteen year old, but at the moment he was just trying to be as discreet as possible about the fact that he was babysitting a drunk fifteen year old. 

He tossed Pavel onto the couch in the front room and stepped out to find a cooler. He came back with his arms full of water bottles and sat down on opposite from Pavel. Pavel just stared at him, blinked slowly and shook his head like he was dizzy and went back to staring. It was pretty quiet, the only other people in the room being Hikaru’s grandfather and great uncle playing cards (like always). 

Hikaru passed Pavel a water bottle. 

“The more you drink the less your hangover is going to suck tomorrow.”

Pavel downed a fourth of the bottle in one sip. He looked over at Hikaru and smiled. 

“Your family is really big.” 

“Yeah.” Hikaru sighed, relaxed further into the couch cushions. 

“Is it like this every year?”

“More or less. You missing anything like this back home?” 

Pavel squinted at him and finished the rest of the water bottle. 

“Oh shit, should I not have asked.”

“No, it’s okay.” Pavel let his head fall back onto the couch. He lifted his legs off of the floor and set them down over Hikaru’s lap. 

“It’s just...you don’t really talk to your family.”

“Not much family to talk to. Just my parents. They work all the time. Also there is the time difference.” 

So his parents were workaholics, that came as no surprise. Pavel went back and forth between working constantly and sleeping like the dead. Sometimes Hikaru would walk in on him sitting upright in bed, fully clothed, lap covered in homework, and absolutely knocked out. He had never seen him actually relax before, and yet here he was, sprawled out over the couch, staring at the ceiling like he had all the time in the world. Hikaru almost wished he was drinking too.

“Here, drink another one.” Hikaru handed him a second bottle of water. 

They stayed on that couch for a long time, as the sunset started to leak through the blinds and until the sky had finally settled into darkness. The party died down, a good portion of them leaving to stay at hotels or with Hikaru’s aunt and uncle who lived just across the bridge. Hikaru waved as they passed by; he’d have gotten up from the couch if not for the fact that almost everyone would be back in a few days for Christmas morning (and for the fact that Pavel was asleep with half of his body on top of him). 

Aiko walked in with a snickerdoodle hanging from her mouth and two more in her hand. She sat on the armrest next to Hikaru, bit off her cookie and glanced over at Pavel sleeping on the other side of the couch. 

“That your boyfriend?” 

Hikaru snorted. He took one of the cookies from Aiko’s hand.

“Nah. My roommate.”

“Good. I was thinking he looks too young for you.”

She smirked and flicked his forehead like she always used to and Hikaru just rolled his eyes. 

“Anyway, mom told me to tell you that you two need to go upstairs and sleep in beds like normal people.” 

“You wanna wake this kid up?” Hikaru asked. 

“According to Yuki you’re the one that got him drunk.”

“ _ I did not get him drunk _ ,” Hikaru whispered harshly. He shoved the snickerdoodle in his mouth and looked at Pavel, still out like a rock. Aiko stood up. 

“Sure, if you say so. See you two in the morning.” 

“Whatever,” He grumbled, mouth half full. 

Pushing Pavel’s legs off of his lap did nothing to wake him up. Neither did saying his name or trying to shake him by the shoulder. Eventually Hikaru just gave up and hoisted Pavel to his feet. 

He was still half-asleep while Hikaru led them upstairs and into his room. Hikaru really started to envy how heavily he always seemed to sleep. Once during the semester he’d tripped and fell against Pavel’s bed, literally moving it more than a foot across the floor. Pavel hadn’t even shifted, just went silent for a beat before he kept on snoring. 

Hikaru figured he was awake enough to recognize the air mattress on the floor and he left Pavel so he could go brush his teeth and get ready for bed. 

When he came back Pavel was lying down on the air mattress, eyes wide open, looking at him. It was almost creepy with the room half-dark. 

“What’s up?” 

“I’m having a really nice time.” Pavel smiled sleepily, clearly still buzzed. “Thank you for inviting me.”

Hikaru paused, and then climbed into bed awkwardly, aware that Pavel was still watching him. 

“It’s no problem.”  

“I like you, Hikaru.”

Pavel’s eyelids grew heavy until he finally closed his eyes. 

“I like you, too, man.” Hikaru yawned. He lied down and turned towards the wall. 

“I’m going to remember you said that next time you get angry at me for leaving the room a mess.” 

“Great. You do that.”


	3. chapter three: year two

They got back to the Academy after the break and immediately had to jump back into academics and extracurriculars and flight sims and study groups, but their friendship became more present in the few moments when they were in the same room together. Mostly from the fact that they had actually started to talk to one another. And sometimes they even  _ intentionally _ hung out together, too. Pavel would tell Hikaru about things he was learning in class, or about a story he heard on the news that he found interesting, and Hikaru humored him while he geeked out. Hikaru, in turn, dragged Pavel along anytime he felt like leaving campus for a break, even if it was just to find some food that didn’t come from a school cafeteria. 

At least one of Hikaru’s family members called him every week, and when Pavel started appearing in the background they got into a habit of interrogating  _ him _ too, on his studies, and whether or not he was sleeping and eating normally, and when he was going to visit next. 

In the eyes of his parents and two sisters, Pavel was on his way to becoming an honorary family member, and Hikaru was starting to adjust to that dynamic, too. But he still wasn’t sure if Pavel made more sense to him as a brother, or a roommate that he spent multiple hours a day talking to, or, possibly, a friend. 

Pavel didn’t seem to know what their relationship was supposed to be, either. He went back and forth from following Hikaru around and fucking off on his own looking for new rules to break. The two of them ate meals together and talked pretty regularly, but they also occasionally didn’t speak to each other for days at a time and Hikaru would notice Pavel being pissy and moody for absolutely no reason.

The short answer was, obviously, that Pavel was still going through puberty. 

Hikaru didn’t really have any practical experience with younger siblings. He was the youngest child, the youngest cousin, and after so many years he couldn’t really wrap his head around being looked up to or relied on or having any sense of authority in a relationship. Not that Pavel acted like he gave a shit about his opinion, or anyone’s. He just went out and made mistakes without anyone else’s input. The only part where it was clear that he was relying on Hikaru for anything was that unspoken expectation that Hikaru would always be structured and responsible and there to remind Pavel to  _ do his goddamn laundry _ or  _ eat real food _ before he burned out completely.

But ultimately their relationship didn’t have so many issues, not nearly as many as Hikaru and his sisters had had growing up. The only real source of tension between the two of them was the fact that both of them pointedly avoided the conflicts that  _ did _ come up. They didn’t really talk about serious stuff, and they never brought anything up when the other was bothering them, deciding instead to just avoid each other until they stopped feeling bothered. 

Their setup worked well enough that they requested to bunk together for their second year. And then, a few months in, everything finally started to fall apart between them. 

Hikaru’s classes were a lot harder, now. He had practically doubled his hours, on top of the twice weekly flight sims he was required to do if he wanted to be a pilot after graduation. Eventually, after a very rough transition period, he learned that he was perfectly capable of dealing with his new course load, but he was starting to wane in his ability to deal with Pavel. 

Hikaru had exactly five hours and fifteen minutes sanctioned off on weeknights for sleeping. His day always went fine if he could sleep the entire five hours and fifteen minutes through, undisturbed. Tonight would mark the twelfth time in a row, however, that Pavel came into the room halfway through and started making all kinds of noise, as if Hikaru wasn’t  _ right there.  _

Hikaru was angry; he wasn’t going to lie to himself. He sat up in bed, glared at Pavel where he was sitting on the floor of their room, working on an assignment in the half-dark and eating out of several different boxes of takeout. 

There was a part of him that made him think that maybe he should be the mature one here. He was three years older than Pavel, and it’s not like he’d ever  _ explicitly _ said that he didn’t like being woken up by Pavel’s ridiculous daily routine when he had a flight sim in the morning. Maybe he shouldn’t assume that Pavel had the common sense to know not to do this. 

But Hikaru was really tired, and living with weeks of resentment already. So fuck maturity. 

“Are you ever going to learn how to live like a human?” He spat out, and Pavel looked up at him, eyes wide, like he really didn’t understand where this was coming from. He set down the box he was eating out of. 

“I’m...sorry?” 

Hikaru glared at him. He probably needed to explain himself, since Pavel couldn’t get it through his thick skull that his actions affected the people around him, especially the people who have  _ no choice but to be around him _ and are  _ desperately trying to sleep _ . 

“Thanks,” he spat out, “you know there are dozens of places on this campus that you could be pulling your chinese-food all nighters and instead you’ve chosen to sit on the floor of our room while I’m trying to get enough sleep so that I don’t fail my flight sim and get pushed back another semester. But thanks for the apology. You fixed it.”

Pavel’s eyes managed to get wider. If Hikaru had been fully awake and not stressed out of his mind, he would’ve realized that he wasn’t exactly handling this in the best way. And then it only took about thirty seconds of them staring at each other before Pavel went from shock to fighting back. 

“This is  _ my room _ too.” He squinted, and started eating again to prove some sort of point. “It’s not my fault you took on a schedule that you can’t handle.”

“A schedule that _ I can’t handle?  _ Are you seriously going to make that argument with me? Have you seen yourself?”

Pavel lifted his chin. So he really was going to make that argument. 

“You think I can’t handle it here? I’m not the one who sleeps through every meal and does all of my assignments in the middle of the night. It’s not my fault your parents couldn’t raise you to take care of yourself but you need to deal with it, already. I’m tired of waiting for you to grow up. So either you go the fuck to sleep or you take your  _ shit _ somewhere else.”

Hikaru knew as soon as he was finished that the  _ your parents couldn’t raise you _ part was crossing a line. Multiple lines, probably. He could see Pavel shutting down, the aggression in his face replaced by poorly-shielded hurt. 

They stared at each other for a few seconds more, and then Pavel was scrambling to collect his things and storming out of the room. 

“Fuck you,” he said through gritted teeth. 

“Fuck you,” Hikaru shot back, because whether or not he’d gone too far, he still had to be up in less than three hours. 

“ _ Fuck you! _ ” Pavel nearly yelled as the door slid shut behind him. 

Hikaru fell backwards into bed, the only two thoughts in his head being  _ thank god he’s gone _ and  _ what the fuck just happened _ . 

 

-

 

After that night he hardly ever saw Pavel, which meant either that the kid knew Hikaru’s schedule well enough to avoid being in their room at the same time, or that he had just stopped coming to their room at all. 

Hikaru ran into him, literally, in the library, and one look at Pavel confirmed the latter. If he was strung out and sleep deprived before, it was exponentially worse now. He looked thinner after only a week and a half, pale all over save for the dark circles hanging under his eyes, and extremely grumpy.  

Pavel crouched down to pick up the stack of books that Hikaru had knocked out of his hands when he turned the corner without looking and collided with him chest to chest. Hikaru just stood there, dumb and frozen in place and not sure if he should say something or not. 

Pavel stood back up, looking a little surprised that Hikaru was still there. 

“Uh…” Hikaru started. He knew that there was an apology he needed to make. Multiple, actually. But the words didn’t really come to him as he was face to face with the emotional and apparently physical damage he’d caused. 

Pavel just looked away, held his books to his chest and kept walking, all but intentionally shoving against Hikaru’s shoulder as he pushed past him. 

 

-

 

Pavel’s new plan to never see or speak to Hikaru again was ruined a bit by the fact that they had a class together that semester. Although he did make a show of always choosing the farthest seat possible from Hikaru, which was really starting to get childish. Hikaru had trouble focusing sometimes, knowing that Pavel was in the room somewhere actively hating him. Even on days when Pavel didn’t bother to glare at him if they accidentally passed each other, Hikaru still felt guilty for some reason. 

It was a flight class, with one two hour lecture every Friday and one flight simulation every Monday, for which students were chosen at random to participate. The two of them made it about a month after their fight without getting assigned to do a flight sim together, and when they finally did, Hikaru knew it was going to be a shit show. Not just because he and Pavel weren’t exactly on speaking terms, let alone  _ piloting a ship together _ terms, but also because they’d gotten stuck with one of the worst sims in the course. 

“Cadets Sulu and Chekov,” their professor called out at the end of the lecture, “Monday morning you’re going to perform the simulation for Emergency Saucer Separation. Be in the lab by seven AM.”

Hikaru wanted to slide down his chair until he hit the floor. He risked looking over his shoulder to the other side of the lecture hall where he knew Pavel would be, and Pavel, instead of glaring, was staring at him with wide eyes. Once the two of them made eye contact Pavel looked away, shoved his things into his backpack and filed in behind the rest of the students who were on their way out. 

-

“She gave you the Saucer Separation?”

Hikaru nodded and took a second to finish eating before he added, 

“With Pavel.”

“Yikes.” 

Janice knew that the two of them were fighting. Once Pavel stopped showing up to eat lunch with them enough days in a row, she’d pulled the truth out of Hikaru about their little midnight screaming contest that sent Pavel into hiding. And she wasn’t on command track, but she knew what she had heard about that specific sim. It was pretty high on the list of infamous command track exams (or it was, before Jim Kirk took the Academy to court over the Kobayashi Maru simulation). She gave Hikaru a sympathetic smile from across the table. 

“He’s good, though, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, of course he’s good, I just don’t know if we’re going to be able to work together.”

Hikaru could feel a little ball of anxiety starting to form in the pit of his stomach, already thinking about his flight sim even though it wasn’t for another three days. He pushed the food around on his plate and then just gave up and set his fork down. It was bad enough getting a difficult assignment like this, but having to worry, too, about whether or not he could get along with Pavel for the two hour simulation, or if their fighting was going to fail them, Hikaru knew he had a tough weekend ahead. Janice leaned over the table, resting her chin on her palm. Her blonde hair fell forward from her shoulders. 

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like we can practice it.” Hikaru crossed his arms over his chest. “Even if we could, I doubt he would want to practice with  _ me _ .”

“Can’t you two just talk it out this weekend?”

Hikaru sighed. 

“Well do you think he’s going to sabotage you during the sim, anyway? You would both fail it if he did.” 

Janice reached for the cup of coffee she’d gotten from the cafeteria line, even though last year she’d insisted she would never drink it. She only slightly cringed after the first sip. 

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“What’s so bad about the Saucer Separation, anyway?”

 

-

 

The problem with the Saucer Separation wasn’t in the specific mechanics of it; after the last few generations of two-part starships, the process of separating the saucer from the stardrive was as simple as flipping a few switches. It was the course of navigating the saucer to safety. In the imaginary event created for the simulation, while the essential crew stayed in the stardrive to counterattack the enemy ship, the emergency crew left on the bridge, reduced to two, was supposed to operate without any additional crew members to handle status reports and diagnostics. Hikaru knew that when he  _ actually _ went into space a situation like that was extremely unlikely. Even smaller ships were required to keep three or more sets of bridge crew staff. But the point of flight simulations wasn’t always realism, anyway, it was more important to see how command track students reacted to the worst case scenario. 

The morning of the flight sim was the first time in more than a month that Hikaru had woken up and seen Pavel sleeping in his bed for once. He almost let himself believe that it was a sign that things were going to turn out okay. 

Except the two of them got ready and left for the lab in complete, stiff, uncomfortable silence. 

“Won’t you eat breakfast,” Pavel asked flatly while they were walking. Hikaru was shocked both by the question and the fact that Pavel had actually said something. 

“No, I...I’m just going to wait until afterwards.”

“It’s two hours.”

“Won’t  _ you _ eat?” Hikaru replied, and he wanted to kick himself at how provocative that had sounded when it came out. Pavel didn’t even respond to it. They walked the rest of the way to the lab in silence and went in to change uniforms. 

Once they were situated at the helm Hikaru could feel his stomach turning. He tried to remind himself that even if things went badly, he was still going to walk out of there alive, anyway. Pavel looked almost uncharacteristically serious as he turned on the controls. 

“Your task,” said their professor over the intercom, “Is to complete the Saucer Separation and navigate the passengers of the saucer to safety, in the event of an emergency. The clock begins after the ship has come under fire by enemy vessels and the primary bridge crew has already relocated to the stardrive section.”

Hikaru took a deep breath. He glanced over at Pavel, part of him hoping that he would maybe look back and they could have some sort of reassuring moment before it started. He got nothing.

“You may begin.”

All of a sudden every screen and station on the bridge lit up. Emergency alarms were sounding, lights were flashing on and off, announcements for passengers to remain calm and retreat to safety positions were on repeat. It was all designed to distract from the actual task at hand, Hikaru knew, and he managed to tune it out pretty quickly. 

“The Captain has made it to the secondary bridge,” Pavel said, “We need to start the separation.”

“Copy that.”

Hikaru managed to get the saucer off in just a few minutes. It would have been done in less time if the ship didn’t keep getting hit, but he still thought he had done okay. Pavel continued to give him updates through the whole thing, including when they got hit, as if Hikaru didn’t hear and feel it, and then finally the saucer and stardrive were disconnected. 

“You don’t have to tell me when we get hit,” Hikaru said quietly, hoping that the faculty members couldn’t hear. 

“Someone has to give status updates,” Pavel replied, “Since we have no crew. Would you like to do it instead?”

“Can we just pick a course for retreat,” Hikaru gritted out. 

Pavel studied the map that was provided. Another exaggeration of the sim was that they were in partially uncharted space, so their options for navigating to safety were limited. 

“There is a starbase on the other side of the line of fire, or we could escape in the opposite direction and hope we find something.”

“That’s it?”

“Do you want to trade places with me and see for yourself?”

Hikaru felt his blood running hot. He was already under stress just from the nature of the flight sim, and now Pavel was clearly trying to pick a fight with him in the middle of it. 

“Can we focus?” He asked, trying (and failing) to sound like Pavel wasn’t succeeding in annoying him. 

“Where do you want to go.”

“Do I have to be the one that chooses?”

“You’re already acting like you’re the Captain. So choose.”

Hikaru took a deep breath. The ship took another hit and the simulation room jolted to the side. 

“Set course for the starbase,” Hikaru said, “Jesus Christ.”

“Setting course for Starbase 262.”

Hikaru turned the saucer around towards their destination, and towards the middle of the conflict. 

“Why do you think this was the better idea.”

“It’s a charted course.”

“We are going right into the line of fire.”

“Well if you thought it was a bad idea why did you give me the option?”

“I’m sorry I assumed that you would be able to choose the better of two options.”

“Why did you make ME choose when you clearly have an opinion?!” Hikaru nearly shouted. He was haphazardly dodging incoming missiles, sending the ship curving and twisting and barely following its course. 

“It will be a straight shot from here,” Pavel said, “Can we warp.”

“Uh, let me see.”

It wasn’t usually a good idea to go into warp speed when there was still the possibility of hitting something in front of you. Hikaru had to make sure before going through with it that it was both a straight shot and a clear one. 

“Hikaru. Can we warp.”

“Is there anything in front of us?”

“Does it matter?”

“YES.”

Pavel studied the radar. 

“There is one more missile that is maybe coming towards us, if we can avoid it then the coast will be clear.”

“Great.”

Hikaru jerked the ship to the side and just barely avoided another hit, and then he moved to put it into warp speed. And then he realized. 

“We can’t.”

“What do you mean, we can’t?”

“We just have the saucer.”

“Why didn’t you say that before when I asked you if we can warp?”

“Because I wasn’t thinking about that before!”

“Are you thinking at all about what is happening??”

Hikaru turned his head to look at Pavel. His cheeks were bright red up to the tips of his ears, and he whipped around angrily to stare back while he shouted, 

“Pilot the ship!”

At that point, though, they were already dead, and based on how the both of them only got more and more wound up while they fought at each other from across the helm, they knew it. The starbase was barely in view, but now they were being followed, and when their ship was hit again and they lost three of the lower decks. 

“That’s one hundred and fifty passengers. The loss of air pressure puts the following two decks at high risk, totaling two hundred and seventy deaths in the next three minutes.”

“Do you have to tell me that?” Hikaru struggled to keep the ship on course with how sweaty his hands were getting. 

“Yes,” Pavel deadpanned. Another alarm went off. 

“Air pressure is no longer stable in decks ten through sixteen.” Pavel reported. 

“I don’t need to know.”

“Get us to the base already.”

“Stop stressing me out!!”

“We would already be there if you had put the ship in warp speed.”

“How is it my fault that we can’t warp?!”

“JUST GET US TO THE BASE.”

“I’M TRYING. FUCK YOU.”

If Hikaru hadn’t been out of his mind trying to pilot the ship through a battlefield and listening to Pavel’s whining at the same time he would have realized what a huge mistake it was to say  _ Fuck  _ during a flight sim. 

“YOU chose this course!” Pavel cried. 

“Stop saying that!”

Their ship took one last hit before the lights went out, signalling that the entire saucer had lost air pressure. And everyone was dead. The intercom switched on. 

“You two absolutely failed that.”

Pavel stood up out of his chair so fast he nearly knocked it over, and stormed out of the lab. Hikaru just leaned forward and dropped his head against the surface of the helm. It was like everything he imagined could go wrong had gone wrong, and then some. And now he was going to have a failed flight sim on his record. Maybe, if he was lucky, Pavel would kill him after this. 


	4. chapter four: year two

Hikaru was surprised when he returned to his dorm, feeling defeated and still pissed off, and Pavel was actually there again. Hikaru had suspected that he didn’t do such a good job controlling strong emotions, and the state of their room confirmed it. Pavel seemed to have thrown every material possession he owned which was capable of being thrown. And it looked like there might have been a hole in the wall. He must have tired himself out after all that, though, because when Hikaru walked in he was lying face first on top of his unmade bed. 

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Pavel said, muffled by the mattress against his face.

Hikaru put his hands on his hips, still just a foot away from the door. After a minute Pavel pushed himself up to a seat, so Hikaru could see how angry he was, maybe. He didn’t look so upset as he was during the sim, but the mess in the room and the redness around his eyes made it pretty clear that he’d completely lost control once he got back. 

And as much as Hikaru wanted to keep saying mean things to Pavel, because it was his fault for being an immature child, and his fault for not being able to keep his own feelings out of the picture when it was appropriate, it’s not like Hikaru was completely blameless, either. He had blown up at him, weeks ago, and started all of this. Sure, Pavel was kind of a shitty roommate, but there were better ways Hikaru could have dealt with it than quietly and passively seething in resentment until it finally all came out at once. 

So he looked at his sixteen year old roommate who had just failed a test, probably for the first time in his life, and came home to throw a crying fit over it, and decided he needed to really try and not be an asshole for once this semester. Hikaru sighed and felt his shoulders slump a little bit. 

“We both failed it, okay. It was just as much my fault as it was yours.”

Pavel flopped back onto the bed. 

“Go away.”

“It’s just a test, Pavel. We can retake it as many times as we want.”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“The point is that we have to get along. And communicate. Otherwise we’ll just keep failing it.”

“We killed five hundred and twenty seven people,” Pavel moaned, “How am I supposed to be on a real ship after that?”

Hikaru walked over and fell backwards into his own bed. 

“Well maybe if you’re lucky, you won’t end up next to me at the helm on your five year mission.”

Pavel turned to look over at Hikaru. It seemed like maybe his mood was starting to level out, now. 

“If we go back into it without trying to fight with each other, I’m sure we’ll pass it the second time.”

“How can you be sure of that.”

“I’ve seen your other flight sims.”

Pavel nodded, and then he furrowed his eyebrows a little bit, confused. 

“You watch my flight sims?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you hate me.”

“Why would you think that?” Hikaru asked, even though he knew the reason. 

He had yelled at Pavel that night without any real precedent, and sent him storming out of their dorm, and didn’t bother to track him down once in six weeks to apologize or even talk to him. And Pavel was just a kid, really, so of course he looked at other people’s behavior around him and assumed the worst. Sometimes he forgot that Pavel was three years younger than him, because he was here all by himself, and he mainly went through whatever Academy life threw at him without asking for help or stopping to take a break, and Hikaru wouldn’t have been able to do anything like that three years ago. Pavel, he was realizing, maybe wasn’t faring as well as his grades made it seem. 

“I don’t hate you.” Hikaru didn’t even wait for Pavel to answer the question. “Sometimes you’re not the best person to share a room with and I got mad because of it. But that doesn’t mean I hate you.”

Pavel smushed his face into the mattress again. 

“Whatever,” he mumbled, but it wasn’t  _ go away _ , and it wasn’t  _ I don’t want to talk to you _ , so Hikaru interpreted it as a step in the right direction. 

 

-

 

The second time they tried to take the Saucer Separation sim, they failed it again. They tried what Pavel had wanted to do, and changed course for uncharted space, only to end up so far out without finding a place to dock that they lost communication with the crew on the stardrive. Nobody died, but their professor stopped them at the two hour mark to tell them that their ship would have stayed wandering through deep space with no contact from other vessels for forty more days. It was a failing outcome. Not as serious of a failure as losing all five hundred and twenty seven passengers, but still, they failed it.

Except this time Hikaru and Pavel walked out of the lab together, and changed back into their cadet uniforms, and headed to lunch without having to agree that they were going there together. It was their first time sharing a meal since their big falling out, and by the end of it they were laughing with each other again. And Pavel seemed like he was in a much better mood later that day when they agreed to schedule their third attempt. 

 

-

 

The third try, thank god, was the one that worked out. Hikaru was sure that if he had to endure that sim a fourth time he was going to be hearing the ship’s alarm in his nightmares. After actually discussing their options together for a minute they set course for the closest planet, as more of a charade, and bought themselves enough time to get to Starbase 262 using a wider trajectory. Nobody followed them, and once the saucer was docked the crew sent a transmission from the stardrive that they were on their way. Pavel read the transmission out and he beamed at Hikaru from across the helm. Finally beating the stupid thing after three tries gave him such an intense feeling of satisfaction that Hikaru almost wanted to cry. 

 

-

 

Their friendship hadn’t recovered completely after that, but it was getting there. Pavel started making more of an effort to not be so messy and loud at night, and most importantly he was spending time in the dorm again. Hikaru, in exchange, tried not to be a passive aggressive asshole. At first he attempted this through writing notes to leave around the dorm about things Pavel was doing that annoyed him, until Pavel notified him over dinner that this also qualified as being passive aggressive, and Janice agreed, and he had to apologize again. 

So he tried to start telling Pavel in person things that were annoying him, but he found that as time went by he was more or less running out of complaints. Pavel still operated with no semblance of a sleep schedule and spread his homework out all over the floor to study and couldn’t be motivated to do his laundry nearly as often as it needed to be done, but at least he was trying. And now that he knew that Hikaru didn’t hate him for those kinds of things, that seemed to make everything less precarious. 

Hikaru didn’t know what he was expecting when, at the end of the semester, he invited Pavel to spend the holiday break with his family again, but he felt almost content to find out that Pavel barely even had to think about it before saying yes. 


	5. chapter five: year two

They weren’t exactly fighting anymore, but things were still awkward enough between them that Hikaru wasn’t sure if his family was going to pick up on it. He thought about asking Pavel, while they sat next to each other on the bus into town, if they should agree to fake it. In the end he was too afraid to do it. They got off the bus at the end of his street and Hikaru figured that whatever was going to happen would just happen. 

And it turned out alright. Yuki and Aiko were already there when they arrived, so there were enough people to talk to and enough conversation topics bouncing around that nobody seemed to notice that Pavel was a little more tense than the last time he’d been over. After a few hours Pavel barely even looked tense at all. 

It was different than the previous year, when Hikaru had needed to make all those forced attempts for them to hang out. His sisters being there helped, too. The four of them seemed to find activities to do without really thinking about it, going out into the city together or sitting on the floor and trying to find the one broken lightbulb that had shut the whole tree off. Hikaru came downstairs one afternoon after taking a nap and found Pavel in the kitchen with his father and Aiko, making goddamn  _ Christmas cookies _ . 

Now that he had started to actually get to know Pavel, after they worked through all that conflict which showed Hikaru the darker sides of him, Hikaru found himself wondering how Pavel felt about all this. He had assumed, before, that Pavel just went through the motions when it came to the non-academic, non-scientific parts of life, but Hikaru had a suspicion now that if Pavel felt anger so deeply, he must feel everything like that, too. He wasn’t just spending time with Hikaru’s family because he had to, anyway, he chose to come here. He probably hadn’t even tried to book a flight to go home to St. Petersburg. Hikaru realized that Pavel must actually feel something about his family’s house, and his family, and maybe even about him. Something real. 

He reached across the counter to try and steal some cookie dough out of the bowl and Aiko swatted his hand away, and Pavel laughed, and it wasn’t the first time Hikaru had seen him laugh, or the first time he’d seen him laugh with his family, but maybe for the first time Hikaru was realizing that Pavel was happy about something, and he’d had a part in that. All of a sudden he was grateful that they’d gotten over that fight two months ago. Maybe he was a little bit grateful, too, that they’d had that fight in the first place. 

 

-

 

“Computer, play Love Actually.”

“No,  _ god _ , no--not again--Computer, turn it off.”

“Pavel hasn’t seen it,” Aiko protested, “He left here after last Christmas and never saw it.”

“Good.” Yuki opened up a menu on the screen and started scrolling through hundreds of other Christmas movies at the speed of light. Hikaru had just given up on being a part of this discussion. He knew it was coming when he’d agreed to be part of their movie night. 

“What’s wrong with it?” Pavel asked. He had been delegated to the middle of the couch, given the honor of holding the giant bowl of popcorn. Hikaru settled back into his corner and watched as Yuki and Aiko went at it. 

“It’s bad.” Yuki didn’t even look away from scrolling through movies on the tv screen.

“That’s not true.”

“Man ruins his best friend’s wedding video and is an asshole to his wife and then shows up at their door and professes his love for her--bad. Man falls in love with his maid who doesn’t speak English because he saw her in her underwear once--bad. Man cheats on his loving and supportive wife for no reason except he’s bored--bad. Man--”

“Okay, we get it.” Aiko sighed, defeated, and reached over into the bowl of popcorn on Pavel’s lap to eat her feelings. 

“Noticing a pattern, anyone?”

Pavel made a confused face.

“So then, what’s good about this movie?” He asked. 

Yuki shot Aiko a look before she could respond. 

“It’s from a long time ago, okay, you kinda have to suspend your disbelief.”

“My disbelief in men is already as suspended as it can be,” Yuki said flatly. 

“Well, fine, what do  _ you _ want to watch?”

“Something from this century, please.”

Pavel looked over at Hikaru and Hikaru just shrugged. The two of them clearly held no power in this debate. Pavel laughed as Aiko reached into the popcorn again and they all sat back and watched movie titles fly across the screen, too fast for Yuki to really be reading them. It was funny how much Pavel seemed to fit into that scene. Maybe a year ago it would have been awkward, and Pavel would be shrinking himself against the edge of the couch, and Hikaru and his sisters would be afraid to involve him in their typical banter and arguing. 

Instead Pavel was in the middle of all of them, the designated popcorn holder, wrapped in all of the blankets Aiko could find, laughing at Yuki’s jokes, and all of it kind of made sense. He was a part of their little group now, whether he liked it or not. Hikaru’s sisters doted on him from the second he walked through the door. It looked like Pavel enjoyed the attention, and Hikaru was glad. He was especially glad, though, that they were devoting so much energy to Pavel, because it meant they were spending less time bothering their actual brother. If it weren’t for him, Hikaru wouldn’t have been able to get away with falling asleep ten minutes after they finally picked a damn movie to watch. 

He woke up half an hour later and saw Pavel staring wide-eyed at the screen, eating popcorn from the bowl at a steady rate. Yuki had the same look sitting on the couch next to him, and Aiko was already passed out on the other side. Hikaru figured this was as close as they were bound to get to a successful movie night. He snuggled up against the armrest again and went back to sleep.

 

-

 

Hikaru finally got home from spending half of the morning and the entire afternoon shopping with Aiko, which really just comprised of him carrying bags for Aiko and making a total of three purchases: a green tea latte for himself, a candle for that one aunt that he could never manage to buy gifts for, and a star map which he thought was neat and would give to Pavel for Christmas along with the new wire cutters he had already bought for him. Once he was inside he ran upstairs to hide his two purchases in his room until he could get a chance to wrap them. He’d figured Pavel was still where he left him that morning, in the den playing video games, but when he burst into his room he saw Pavel lying on his bed facing the wall. 

It wasn’t that weird for Pavel to have taken his bed over the air mattress on the floor, since Hikaru wasn’t home, or for him to be napping in the middle of the day now that they were on break, but something was in the air that told Hikaru that this wasn’t one of Pavel’s typical afternoon naps. The way that Pavel’s shoulders tensed up slightly at the noise of Hikaru coming in told him that Pavel wasn’t even sleeping. Hikaru shoved his shopping bag in the closet and took a few tentative steps towards Pavel. 

“I know you’re awake.” 

Hikaru saw Pavel tense up a little bit more, but he didn’t turn around or say anything. Pavel did this sometimes. He would come home to find him moping on his bed or sitting in a corner and staring at the floor. But Pavel usually faked his way out of it as soon as he noticed Hikaru in the room. Hikaru didn’t really know what it was Pavel was wrestling with at times like this, but today must have just been extra tough. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” He offered. He was still standing a few feet away from the bed, feeling a little bit like a stranger in his own room. He couldn’t decide if it would have been weirder to leave Pavel alone in  _ his _ room or to try to stick around whether or not the kid started to talk. Pavel still didn’t say anything. Hikaru shoved his hands in his pockets. 

“Okay, well, uh, I guess I’ll just go hang out with Aiko downstairs. She’s probably waiting for me to do all of her present wrapping for her, anyway.”

Pavel shifted in the bed a little bit, but Hikaru was already awkwardly making his way to the door. 

“Wait--”

Hikaru turned around. Pavel was propped up on his elbow. The lights were off in the room but Hikaru could see enough of his facial expression to know that he was sad. He opened his mouth to speak and paused, looking almost embarrassed about what he was trying to say. 

“Will you stay,” he asked quietly, and Hikaru tried not to react in a way that would make it more awkward for the two of them. Hikaru wasn’t actually Pavel’s older brother, or his therapist, or his boyfriend, or even a good enough friend that he knew anything about what Pavel was going through or how to comfort him. They had only really been friends for a year at this point, and had only been friends who talk about their feelings for a total of two months. 

But clearly Pavel needed someone, and maybe Hikaru was the closest thing he had. And he must have been feeling safe enough that afternoon to want to open up. Either way Hikaru knew that his decision whether or not to stay mattered. He could casually make an excuse and go downstairs and let Pavel sort himself out before dinner, and effectively close the door on the possibility of them becoming close friends who talked about their feelings and were there for each other. 

Or he could stay, because Pavel had asked him to. 

Hikaru stayed. He switched on his desk lamp so it wasn’t so dark in the room and sat down at the foot of the bed. Pavel pushed himself up and folded his knees against his chest. They met eyes for a second and then Pavel looked away, crossing his arms around his legs like he was trying to contain himself. 

“ _ Do _ you want to talk about it?” Hikaru asked again. He tried not to sound too forward, because he didn’t want Pavel to chicken out and force a smile on his face, but he didn’t want to sound too casual either like he didn’t care. He did care. Pavel was the closest thing he had at the Academy to a best friend. After Aiko and Yuki and his parents he was probably the most important person in his daily life. Hikaru didn’t want him to feel like there were things he couldn’t say. 

“Is it because you didn’t go home for Christmas again?”

“No. That place isn’t my home.” Pavel took a short, heavy breath, like he couldn’t seem to breathe in enough air or breathe out enough of his angst. 

So this definitely was about the fact that he didn’t go home for Christmas. Pavel had spent the summer term in San Francisco, too, which was normal for the more dedicated students, but usually international students liked to take the opportunity to go back to their home countries for a little while. Hikaru hadn’t really thought about it, but Pavel probably hadn’t been home since before he’d left for the academy a year and a half ago. 

“So it’s about your family.” 

“I don’t care what they think,” he spat out. He clearly did.

“But you do, though,” Hikaru said quietly, and finally it was like a switch flipped and Pavel opened the floodgates.

“All they ask--I call them, I text them, I email them my grade reports--all they ever want to know is when I will become the top student. When I will graduate early. When I will become captain of a ship after graduation. I tell them that I am just studying here like a normal student and they are disappointed. I’m not allowed to be  _ normal student _ I have to be  _ special  _ and I was so  _ special  _ when I got into the Russian Space Academy when I was thirteen and everyone else eighteen, but do you want to know the truth??”

“What’s the truth?” Hikaru asked, still trying to process all of the information that had just rushed out of him. 

“I hated the Space Academy. I hated the people. Everything was a competition. Everyone was an enemy to everyone else. I left because I was becoming like them. I just want to go to space and I want it to be good without trying to make things bad for everyone else. And I’m here and everyone is smarter than me but I don’t care because at least they are all nice. But they still say--I am not the top of the class anymore. I am not the best student like back in Russia. I am just a normal student--they say I am giving up on myself. I am lazy. They can’t be proud anymore of their son who is studying in Starfleet because I have not done anything to be proud of.”

Pavel’s brows were furrowed together and his knuckles were white from how tightly he held himself but finally he looked like he was done. Hikaru had never heard any of this before. He didn’t know Pavel’s parents were so hard on him. He figured they weren’t that close, definitely not as close as he was with his own parents, but he had no idea that they had been continually making Pavel feel like shit for not being valedictorian  _ on top of  _ being the youngest student in the Academy. It was unbelievable, really. Most parents of Starfleet students had enough to brag about just from the fact that their child got in to Starfleet.

“That’s stupid.”

“They are right, a little bit,” Pavel’s voice cracked just slightly and shook on the last few words. He tried to smile to counteract the otherwise clear indications that he was about to cry. 

“ _ How? _ ”

“In Russia I worked very hard. I don’t work like that here, I...I take too many breaks. Like this one. In Russia I would be studying over the holiday but all morning I was playing Animal Crossing.”

“So?? You’re sixteen. It’s okay to play Animal Crossing all morning.”

“But this is why I can’t be better at Starfleet. I’ve become lazy here.”

“Pavel, I’ve been living with you for a year and a half. You aren’t lazy. You’re probably one of the hardest working students at the academy and you’re younger than all of them.”

Pavel’s eyes started watering as he listened to Hikaru, and Hikaru wondered if anyone had ever, ever encouraged him without him having to earn some sort of academic title or award first. Hikaru understood, now, how he must be cycling between feeling totally out of depth at Starfleet and hating himself for it, with nobody there to tell him he was doing just fine. 

“I’m younger, but I’m not any better than them.”

“That’s because Starfleet is fucking hard!!” Hikaru threw his hands up in the air, “For everyone! Especially me! That’s why I’m stress-crying in the shower all the time.”

“You stress cry in the shower?” Pavel asked, voice still wobbling. 

“Probably at least once a week.”

Pavel laughed at him just a little bit, which was good, and Hikaru tried not to look at the tears spilling over onto his cheeks. He laughed too, and he finally felt like they were getting somewhere when Pavel started to relax his posture, letting his arms fall to his sides instead of tightly gripping around his knees. 

“You shouldn’t feel like you have to be better than people who are five years older than you who have been at Starfleet for years. And I don’t know why your parents are saying that you need to do anything more than what you already do. You do a lot.”

Pavel sniffed. He looked like he wanted to agree but he just couldn’t let himself believe that he was doing fine where he was. 

“Okay fine, this is going to sound dumb and it might make this awkward, but at the very least  _ I’m _ proud of you. I see what you do at Starfleet at sixteen years old. Just the fact that you’re even here. It’s really impressive. Anyone could tell you that, even the people who  _ are _ at the top of the class.”

Pavel looked down at his lap. Hikaru might have said too much already, but he didn’t know when it would be the next time that Pavel opened up to him like this. He wanted to say everything he could say while he still had the chance, even if it didn’t come close to combating Pavel’s belief that he was a disappointment and that he had peaked at age thirteen. 

“I am proud of you, okay? And I bet everyone you go to class with is blown away by you. When they were your age they probably weren’t half as smart as you are.”

Pavel rubbed his eyes aggressively, probably hoping that it would hide that there were some more tears falling out. 

“When you’re older you’re going to do incredible things, you know. It just takes time. You’ll be out in space and you’ll map the stars and you’ll be so happy and sure of yourself that you won’t even remember that you ever felt like this.”

“You will be there, too, right? In space?” Pavel sniffed.

Hikaru didn’t want to mention that ship assignments were usually out of their control and them being roommates was no guarantee on where they were sent on their five year mission, but Pavel probably knew that himself anyway. He just needed to hear that his friend was going to be there for him. And Hikaru would be. He would be there for him no matter where they went after graduation. 

“Yeah,” he said, reaching out his hand to rest on Pavel’s knee, “I’ll be there.”

Pavel smiled just a little bit, but it was a real effort this time at trying to feel better. Hikaru figured he had done an okay job, hopefully okay enough that they could avoid Pavel bottling up his feelings from now on. He was just a kid, after all, a kid who had moved to the other side of the world all by himself, and it wasn’t right that he should always feel like he had to go through everything alone, or that he felt like he shouldn’t be going through anything at all. 

“Also, if you need some parental encouragement, you could always just call my parents, you know. I’d really rather they talk to you directly than always compliment you when they’re supposed to be talking to  _ me _ .”

As if on cue, Hikaru’s dad yelled from downstairs that there would be food ready soon. The two of them got up and Pavel wiped the tears from his face with the sleeve of his sweater, trying to look a little more presentable. Hikaru’s family would probably be polite about it anyway, all it would take was a look from him to  _ not say a word _ and they could all just have a normal dinner. And then Hikaru was going to force Pavel to spend the rest of the evening doing anything  _ but _ studying. 

Before they went downstairs Hikaru stopped in the doorway, 

“You can talk to me, you know. About this kind of stuff. If you want.”

“Okay,” Pavel said, and Hikaru was pretty sure that this time Pavel actually believed him. 

 

-

 

Even though Hikaru had tried to make his pep talk about how it wasn’t that important to be the best student in class all the time, they got back to the Academy after the break and that’s exactly what Pavel did. His grades were already good, but somehow he managed to bring them up to near perfect, and then by the end of the semester he was making perfect scores across the board. 

This seemed to be in direct contrast to how he acted outside of class, because between hours spent in lectures and flight sims and studying and, occasionally, sleeping, Pavel apparently found time to get into the same kind of trouble he always did, like getting into arguments with his classmates or breaking housing regs or disappearing for hours at a time. And now that the two of them were becoming actual friends who actually communicated with each other, Hikaru was getting pulled into all of the drama, too. 

Pavel burst into their room after class one afternoon, halfway through February, and without speaking left a trail of books and shoes and his cadet uniform across the room before all but catapulting into bed. Hikaru just watched the entire event from his desk. Finally when it looked like Pavel’s shoulders had slumped into the mattress and he was taking slow, even breaths, he shut off his PADD and swiveled his chair around to face him. 

“Welcome home.”

“Mmmmfph.”

And before Hikaru even had the chance to ask Pavel what was up, Pavel lifted his head off of his pillow and said, 

“I have just had the worst day of the year.”

“Of the year? You’re already calling it?”

“Yes.”


	6. chapter six: year two

After a year and a half Janice and Hikaru had solidified their lunch routine. Always the same table in the far left corner of the cafeteria, next to the big windows. Whoever made it to the cafeteria first would throw a jacket over it to claim it. They took turns bitching while they ate together, even if all they had to bitch about was the cafeteria food, and then Janice would get up to return their trays and come back with coffee, and they would sit in easy silence for a little while until they were mentally ready to go back to class. Or until they had to go, because they were about to be late. Whichever came first, but usually it was the latter. 

It wasn’t always the two of them. Sometimes Gaila made an appearance, raising the volume of their conversations by at least 50 percent whenever she did. Sometimes Janice showed up with a random combination of Engineering track cadets, who were either in love with her or looking for test answers or both. And, sporadically, as if he didn’t have the same schedule every week, Pavel would surprise them by showing up. Since they always went to the same table at the same time it made it easy for him to find them. Then he would listen to them talk while he inhaled an entire day’s worth of food and followed it with two cups of tea. 

“Just out of curiosity, Pavel, how many cavities have you had?” Janice asked after Pavel had showed up to lunch for the third day in a row, and was pouring an entire spoonful of sugar into his tea for the third day in a row. 

Pavel ignored her, save for a small eyeroll. He stirred the sugar in, tasted it carefully, and then added another half spoonful. 

“Really, that is disgusting.”

He waved his hand at her dismissively, like he was trying to clear the air in front of him. She sighed and shook her head, wrapped her hands tightly around her own mug of unsweetened coffee with coconut milk. 

“What are we going to do about him, Hikaru,” she said, half sarcastic and maybe a little bit serious. 

“Let me live?” Pavel asked. 

Hikaru snorted. 

“If you’re going to keep eating lunch with us you’ll have to get used to her unsolicited nutritional advice.”

Janice gasped, pretending to be offended. 

“Would you rather I just let you be unhealthy?”

“Yes, please,” Pavel said. He pulled his mug up to his mouth and proceeded to drink his sugar tea as Janice just watched, eye twitching. Hikaru laughed out loud at that. At his second cup of tea, Pavel held eye contact with Janice as he poured in the sugar, until finally she caved and had to look away. He clicked his tongue, trying to hide a self-satisfied smile. 

“How about tomorrow I make you tea with cream and sugar and you try to tell me it doesn’t taste good.” 

“How about this weekend I take you to an actual coffee shop and order you something that doesn’t need cream and sugar to be good?”

Pavel thought about that while he stirred, spoon scraping along the inside of the mug. He shrugged. 

“Deal.”

 

-

 

They parted ways after lunch, but Janice walked with Hikaru in the wrong direction for a few minutes so she could say,

“He’s doing better isn’t he?”

“Who?”

“Pavel.”

“Oh. I guess so.”

Janice rolled her eyes at him, looped their arms together as they headed towards Hikaru’s Xeno-botany course. He was pretty sure she was supposed to be in one of the engineering buildings, on the other side of campus, in, like, ten minutes. 

“You know, you act like you’re oblivious about this stuff, but I know that you actually do pick up on other people’s feelings.”

Hikaru stared straight ahead. He could feel Janice’s eyes on him, and he breathed out a laugh. 

“Now I’m not sure if you followed me so you could analyze me or him.”

“Let’s call it both.”

“Don’t you have a class to get to?”

“Look I just wanted to say that he looks better. And he must be happier, because he just agreed to socialize with me this weekend and I didn’t even have to try to convince him.”

Hikaru remembered their little conversation about trying each other’s caffeinated drinks. They had agreed to hang out that weekend, hadn’t they. He didn’t even notice how weird it was that Pavel had agreed so quickly to it. Probably since he was busy resigning himself to the likelihood of getting roped into their little coffee date even though he didn’t really drink coffee. 

“That’s true.”

“You took him to Christmas again, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good. You two are good for each other.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. She’d said things like that before, but usually to the tune of  _ you could be good for him because he is a teenage trainwreck _ and not vice versa. 

“How is he good for me?”

“Because now that you guys are friends again you don’t have such a huge stick up your ass.”

“Hold on a second--”

“Okay I gotta go to class bye!”

Janice kissed him on the cheek and hurried across campus, leaving him at the entrance to the sciences building. Hikaru was still trying to process that last thing she’d said, and he didn’t know if he should feel touched or insulted. He figured he’d just let it be both at once and went to class. 

  
  


-

  
  


Pavel was already camped out on the floor of their dorm room when Hikaru made it back from the library. He’d spent three hours studying for Intergalactic Diplomacy 210 and still felt like he knew nothing when he finally decided to call it a day. He had until the end of the week, at least, until the midterm, but he still felt like he should have gotten farther that afternoon. When he saw Pavel’s work spread out across the floor in front of him, forming a semicircle around his crossed legs, he could see that Pavel was struggling with the same issue. 

“Diplomacy midterm?” Hikaru asked, toeing his shoes off at the door. 

“I’ve been staring at this stuff for hours and still my brain is empty.”

“Same.”

Pavel pushed his hair back from his forehead, even though it just bounced back in place almost immediately. He glared down at the PADD in his hand again, and then apparently gave up and tossed it on the floor.

“I can put this away if you want to sleep,” Pavel said, “I don’t think I will get anywhere anyway.”

Hikaru padded over to his closet so he could tear his cadet uniform off in favor of pajamas. He thought about it for a minute. On the one hand, sleep would probably be the healthier choice; he could wake up early tomorrow and look over his notes with fresh eyes and maybe start to absorb something. But on the other hand, his stomach was in knots over his unsuccessful afternoon, over the idea that he might have wasted a day. 

“Actually.” Hikaru pulled a t-shirt on over his sweats and turned back to Pavel, “I kind of want to keep studying, if you’d be up for it.”

Pavel perked up a little bit. 

“Together?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’ll help.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Pavel’s mouth, more of relief than anything, like maybe he had been worried, too, about losing a day of studying. The two of them would study in the same room, sometimes, or at the same table in the library, but never really together, helping each other on the same subject. Maybe it was what they needed this time. 

Hikaru joined him on the floor, against his previously-held rule for himself of only ever studying while sitting in a chair at a desk, and unpacked his bag, adding to the array of notebooks and textbooks and PADDs between him and Pavel. 

“Can we order food?” Pavel asked. Hikaru tried to remember if he had eaten anything since his lunch hour in between classes. He hadn’t. Come to think of it, Pavel hadn’t even showed up to lunch, which he usually did these days. 

The two of them definitely needed some food.

“For sure.”

And then Pavel really did smile. 

 

-

 

A few hours and a few boxes of takeout later, they were actually starting to get somewhere, it felt like. Hikaru was sure that he felt his brain was expanding to fit new information as they talked each other through the material. Either that, or he was just  _ that _ sleep deprived. But they were making progress, enough that Hikaru stopped considering it a wasted day. 

Once he’d tired himself out for the second time that day with Intergalactic Diplomacy he moved from the floor to the couch, sinking into the cushions and leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling. 

“Why don’t you just go to bed?” Pavel asked, but he was already joining Hikaru on the couch. 

“I’m still too stressed to sleep.” 

“You are always stressed.”

“That’s true.”

Hikaru let his eyes fall closed. He relaxed a little more against the couch cushions, feeling heavy and tired now that he wasn’t distracted with studying. That feeling he’d had earlier in the afternoon, of loose ends, was nearly gone. Nearly, because--

“Why weren’t you at lunch today, by the way?” Hikaru asked without needing to turn his head and look at Pavel. He knew Pavel was over there on the other side of the couch, probably sitting with his knees hugged up against his chest. 

“I was feeling sad,” Pavel replied, and Hikaru was surprised at how easily he’d admitted to it this time. It was like as soon as Pavel had gotten a taste of speaking his mind he immediately excelled at it, like he did with every other skill he picked up. 

“Why? Because of midterms?”

“No,” Pavel shook his head, and Hikaru realized he had opened his eyes in the last few seconds to look over at him. He did have his arms wrapped around himself, pulling his knees against his chest. He looked very neat and small and curled into a ball at the end of the couch. Hikaru reached over with his foot, poking his leg with one toe. 

“You can tell me, you know. I broke my bedtime for you.”

Pavel sighed, and Hikaru could tell that he was only pretending to be frustrated. The next thing he said was directed at the floor. 

“Three years ago my grandfather died, around this time.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to say something.”

“Were you close with him?”

“Yes.”

“Well you were still in Russia three years ago, right, so weren’t you able to--”

“No,” Pavel cut him off, still staring at the floor. Hikaru was worried that he might have really said the wrong thing, because his expression had gone so quickly from vaguely sad to angry. He tried to think of what he could say to make Pavel relax again but before he could come up with something Pavel started talking. 

“I didn’t go see him because I told myself that it was more important to study. And then he was gone and I could never see him again.”

“You can’t blame yourself for something like that. You couldn’t have known.”

“Would you do that? If someone in your family got sick, would you stay here and study?”

“Well…”

“You wouldn’t. You’re a good person, Hikaru.”

“So are you.”

“I wasn’t--the Space Academy--it ruined me. It made me worse.”

Hikaru didn’t try to come up with a counter for that. He just sat and listened. 

“After I got the news that he had died I decided that I couldn’t stay there. I knew that if I did I would be alone for the rest of my life.”

Pavel’s gaze was gradually coming up from the floor. Now it was directed at the armrest next to Hikaru. 

“My parents told me I was losing sight of what was important, but they didn’t know that I already had lost sight of what was important. But I really had only told them that school made me unhappy. I didn’t tell them that it was because of my grandfather that I realized I had to leave.”

Pavel paused for a second. 

“I never told this to anyone, actually.”

For a second it looked like Pavel was about to recoil from the admission, say something self-deprecating or try to laugh it off, but he just raised his head finally and met Hikaru’s eyes and gave him a small smile. Hikaru felt a glow of warmth in his chest. 

All of his closest friendships until this point hadn’t needed so much work. His relationships with his sisters were a given, and his childhood friends were always just whoever was around and had the same interests: the boy who lived across the street during elementary school, other kids on the fencing team, his lab partner in high school chemistry class. Pavel showed up in his life and for the first time he had to actually work at making friends with somebody, but also, for the first time, he actually wanted to work at it. 

And maybe it was just that he was tired and stressed and prone to getting sappy over little things, but hearing Pavel say the words  _ I never told this to anyone _ filled Hikaru with just an incredible sense of accomplishment. He tried to think of something to say, but realized quickly that he didn’t have to say anything, really. Instead he just smiled back.  


	7. chapter seven: year three

Hikaru was sitting at his desk trying (and failing, and suffering as a result) to study for a Xeno-botany exam. Pavel was on the floor with his homework spread out around him, giving his future self back problems with his posture. But they were both in the room, more importantly, so when the door to their dorm swished open Hikaru startled and almost stood up out of his chair. 

“Relax, it’s me,” Janice said. She was still wearing her cadet reds, but her stiff jacket was off and hanging over her arm. It was a clear contrast to Pavel and Hikaru in t shirts and sweatpants and looking like they maybe hadn’t left their room all week. 

“How did you get our code?” Hikaru turned over his shoulder to look at Pavel. “Did you give her our code?”

“Yes,” Pavel said without looking up from what appeared to be longhand math equations he was scribbling into his notebook. There was a calculator on the floor next to him but he hadn’t even taken it out of its case yet. 

“Why.”

“For all of the sex we are having,” Pavel deadpanned. 

Hikaru pressed his mouth into a flat line and turned back to Janice, trying his best to communicate with just his expression  _ do you see what I have to live with? _

“Don’t look at me, it’s  _ your _ fucked up sense of humor that’s rubbed off on him.”

Janice tossed her jacket over the edge of their couch before she ever-so-gracefully flopped onto it. 

“Our poor, sweet, Pavel,” Janice continued, propping her legs up across the couch cushions. “He didn’t stand a chance against you and your sarcasm.”

Pavel snorted from where he was still hunched over his notebook. Janice didn’t seem to mind that he hadn’t raised his head to greet her and Hikaru continued to fight the urge to tell him to straighten his goddamn spine. He finally just gave up on studying and shut his textbook to focus on his friends instead. 

“How come nobody has answered my question yet.”

“Do you guys want to go to a party?”

That didn’t answer Hikaru’s question, still, but now his interest was piqued in a different direction. Pavel even looked up. 

“When?” Pavel asked, and then, “Where?”

Hikaru was surprised Pavel was actually interested. Other than getting drunk at family functions (accidentally, at first, and then on purpose) he hadn’t really expressed any interest in partying. They both knew that parties happened, and Hikaru had been to one or two in his second year, but neither were particularly life changing. Mostly he and Pavel just focused on being boring, dedicated students who didn’t show up hungover to Phys Ed in the mornings. 

“You know that house on Park Street?”

He knew it. Probably everyone at Starfleet did. It was a big old style house a few blocks away from campus. The owner of the house rented it out to students who didn’t want to live in dorms, and it always seemed to attract a certain type of tenant: rich, reckless, and alcoholic. It was one of those mystical places around campus was built up into legend through word of mouth after every other weekend. Hikaru had been curious about it since his first year, but never really curious enough to try to go. 

“You can get us in?” Pavel asked, and now he was sitting straight up, turned towards where Janice sat on the couch. 

“ _ You _ want to go?” Hikaru asked him, before Janice had a chance to explain how she was going to even get them in there in the first place. Pavel shrugged. 

“It sounds fun.”

“See? I told you you’re a bad influence on him.” 

 

-

 

The house nearly lived up to its reputation. Nearly, because the music blasting out of the windows into the street was god-awful, but Hikaru was pretty sure that after a few drinks he wouldn’t mind it. Janice nodded to the guy guarding the front door, who was huge and muscular and tattooed and had a goatee and apparently went to Starfleet Academy and not like, biker school, or something. 

“He’s Engineering track with me. I helped him study for the last EE exam,” Janice told them as they were ushered in. So that’s how she got them in. 

It didn’t hurt that she really looked incredible tonight. Her hair was in some complicated-looking updo and she’d finally abandoned the red cadet uniform for a dark green mini dress instead, paired with a leather jacket on top that Hikaru would admit was just fucking cool. Once he’d seen her across the quad he knew that his white button-up and dark jeans were nothing special, and Pavel was even worse. He was wearing what he’d pulled out of the depths of his wardrobe and referred to as his “party shirt” even though Hikaru was positive that he’d never been to a single party before, especially wearing that. 

It was a hideously tacky and multi-colored Hawaiian shirt with little palm trees and surfers on it. Hikaru didn’t want to ask where he’d got it and why he believed it to be a party shirt. He figured it would be more rewarding to just let the kid go to the party dressed like that, like he’d just walked out of another century with his faded jeans and his bright orange socks and shiny white sneakers. It was really too bad that the party started at 10 pm because a pair of vintage Ray-Ban sunglasses would have definitely completed the outfit. 

Oddly enough, Pavel really didn’t look that ridiculous compared to the huge mix of people filling the house. If anything, he kind of fit in. They all did. Starfleet cadets came from all over and brought their clothing trends with them. Seeing so many of them in one place and out of uniform was like walking into a costume party. 

“I always heard about parties like this in Russia. At the Academy. But not until after they had already happened.”

Janice took Hikaru’s hand as they entered the crowd, and Hikaru reached back for Pavel’s. They wove through the house like that, in their little elephant chain, looking for booze. 

“You never went to one?” Hikaru asked. The entire building was filled with noise, and he’d practically shouted over his shoulder at Pavel. Pavel just smiled and shook his head, tagging along behind him. 

“Have you seen me?”

Hikaru attempted to shrug, but the action just pulled Janice and Pavel a little bit closer. 

“I think I see the kitchen over there,” Janice said, leaning close to his ear. Hikaru nodded and they made their way to the thankfully less crowded kitchen. Every surface was covered with bottles or cans or pitchers of something. Hikaru took the safe route and picked up some beer for him and Pavel. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Janice peering into a punch bowl. 

“Don’t drink that,” he said.

“It looks fruity.”

“The forbidden fruit.” Pavel slid in between them, his arms draping over both of their shoulders. He hadn’t even drank anything yet. “Let’s drink it.”

“Let’s not,” Hikaru said again.

“I want to drink it, Pavel wants to drink it,” Janice turned to him and smirked, one perfect eyebrow quirking up, “ _ you  _ enjoy your beer.”

Hikaru did drink his beer, for a little while. He scanned the kitchen, watched people come in and out as he waited for the alcohol to kick in, and then it seemed like Janice and Pavel were just having  _ too _ much fun at the punch bowl, so he stepped closer and took Pavel’s cup so he could try some. Pavel beamed at him, eyelids heavy like he was already getting drunk on his first one.

“Oh, good god,” he coughed, “what the hell is in this, lighter fluid?”

“And...some sort of fruit.” Janice studied the liquid in her cup, swirling it around like she was at a wine tasting, and then she just burst into laughter. Pavel followed suit, giggling until his cheeks started to turn pink. Hikaru was really at a loss trying to figure out  _ what _ exactly they were laughing at. 

He thought about just saying fuck it and drinking the fruity-lighter-fluid-punch with the two of them, but on the off chance that there was something way too strong in it, and their group could go from 2/3 wasted to 3/3 wasted, he decided to stick to drinks where he could look at the label first. 

That of course didn’t mean that he wasn’t about to try and catch up with them. He tipped his beer into his mouth and chugged it. 

“Hey! That’s the spirit!” Janice cheered. 

Hikaru swallowed finally and shivered a little bit. Pavel passed him a second beer, the one Hikaru had picked up for him, and after a few sips of that it really started to feel like a party. 

When Pavel was two drinks in, and Janice three, and Hikaru two and a half, altogether they were just drunk and just dumb enough to leave the safety of the well-lit kitchen and venture out into the other rooms. Pavel stumbled a little bit behind him before he finally looped their arms together to keep track of Hikaru, because even though he was seventeen now and almost a foot taller, he was still a huge goddamn lightweight and, based on his awe-struck expression when they’d walked in, this was definitely his first house party.

Janice took Hikaru’s hand and led them this time to the big living room where they’d set up a makeshift dance floor and what could have been an actual DJ booth, although the flashing lights made it hard to really  _ see _ anything. Soon they were in the middle of the dance floor, the only ones standing still in a crowd of moving bodies, and the right thing to do, of course, was to dance. 

It was awkward at first, the three of them trying to claim a space on the floor where they wouldn’t be elbowed or stepped on, learning how to move to the rhythm and trying to shake the feeling that they looked stupid. But then suddenly it was like a switch was flipped, and dancing was fucking  _ awesome _ . 

Hikaru let himself get lost in the shitty club music filling the air, moved with the rhythm of the bassline that practically shook the floor of the house. He caught eyes with Pavel. Pavel looked ridiculous, jumping up and down and moving his arms around like they were unfamiliar body parts, and Hikaru knew he probably looked ridiculous too, but at this point he was hooked on the feeling of the music moving through him and he couldn’t stop. The only thing he could hear underneath the music was Janice’s laughter at the two of them, even as she rocked and swayed and jumped along with them. 

When he saw Pavel laughing, too, and shaking his head at him and saw his mouth forming around the words  _ you dance so weird _ he took it as a challenge to dance even weirder. And then, of course, it became a competition. 

Janice laughed louder as the two of them tried to outdo each other in sheer stupidity. Pavel was winning, of course, because he was definitely drunker than Hikaru was, but Hikaru was really giving it his all. As he felt himself starting to sweat he rolled his sleeves up past his elbows, undid a few buttons of his shirt. 

“I never thought I’d see you like this,” Janice half-yelled into his ear, after she saw him unbutton his shirt. Hikaru shrugged but he smiled. 

“I can have fun when I’m given sufficient warning.”

But the real person Janice should have been surprised to see having fun on the dance floor was Pavel. Pavel, who barely made time to sleep and eat in his academic schedule, let alone socialize. Partying didn’t even seem like it was within the realm of possibility. And yet here he was, drunk on mystery punch and wearing that stupid Hawaiian shirt and dancing like he was the happiest idiot in the world. 

After a while they attracted a few others into their little dancing group, none of which Hikaru recognized. One of them, a short, curly-haired girl who hadn’t taken her eyes off of Janice since she and her friends had come over to dance with them, whispered something into Janice’s ear. 

“What?” She yelled. 

The girl cupped her hands this time and tried again. 

“Oh! Yes! Pavel!”

Pavel danced closer to Janice, bobbing his head to the music. Hikaru couldn’t believe this was the same person that he’d lived with for the past two and a half years. 

“Claudia wants to know if we want some vodka!” Janice told him, and Pavel’s entire face lit up. He was so, so drunk already. 

 

“VODKA?”

He stretched his arms out, tilted his head back and shouted to the rooftops and, presumably, the whole world,

VODKA WAS INVENTED IN RUSSIA!”

 

Apparently that was Pavel’s way of saying _ yes, I would like some vodka, thank you _ . 

 

-

 

They ended up on the roof with the rest of the wallflowers and dizzy people and groups of friends looking for a spot to sit down and talk about their feelings. After Pavel said he needed air Janice disappeared somewhere in between taking shots with Claudia and the trip upstairs, so it was just the two of them. They sat down on the floor of the roof, pressed together in the cool night air, and looked up. 

“You can’t even see anything, really,” Hikaru said, and his ears were ringing and his mouth felt fuzzy and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever had vodka before, because the one shot he took was hitting him in a way he’d never experienced. He squinted up at the sky, as if the act would make the stars appear from behind all of the light from the city that still hung in the air. 

“Even when I can’t see them, though, I look up at the night sky and I know they are there. And I think that’s beautiful.” Pavel had apparently passed from drunk to hammered to poetic. Hikaru just accepted whatever he was trying to say, and then he paused for a second.

“They’re still there in the sky during the day, you dummy.”

“Fuck,” Pavel laughed, “It’s true.”

“How much did you drink?”

“The perfect amount,” he said wistfully. 

Pavel leaned back, first on his elbows, and then he just laid down against the wooden panels of the terrace, bending his arms out side to side so he could rest his head on his hands. Hikaru snorted, but it looked comfortable, so he joined him. 

They stayed like that for a while, listening to the party still going on downstairs. Hikaru stared up into the blank sky, one big swatch of dark, deep, blue, and then he spotted one. He nudged Pavel with his shoulder. 

“Look, over there,” he pointed, “there’s a star.”

Pavel made a pleased little noise in the back of his throat, and then they settled back into silence, looking up together at the one star they could see. After a few minutes Pavel’s breathing started to get harsher and a little weird, even for a drunk person, and then Hikaru heard a sniffle. He turned his head to the side and Pavel was crying. 

“What’s wrong?”

Pavel sniffed again, tears spilling onto his cheeks. 

“I just…” he took a shaky breath, “I just love the stars  _ so much _ , Hikaru.”

“You are so drunk,” Hikaru said, and Pavel laughed, and then cried again, and then laughed even more at his own crying. Hikaru propped himself up on one elbow so he could witness the whole thing, because Pavel at this party tonight had just been a fucking  _ journey  _ of one unexpected thing to the next. 

“I just really love them,” he said again, voice wobbly. Another tear spilled out and before Hikaru could really think about what he was doing, he reached over and wiped it away. Pavel’s tears were hot against his even hotter cheek. He looked at Hikaru with his big, teary, drunk eyes, and for a second Hikaru wondered if that had been weird, but then Pavel was laughing again. 

Hikaru was close enough to feel his laughter as clearly as he heard it, and it became contagious. By the time Janice found them again, strands of hair falling around her face and lipstick smudged, Pavel and Hikaru were just lying there and looking up at the sky and, every few minutes or so, dissolving into laughter again, for no real reason at all. Hikaru couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed so much in one day. He decided that coming to the Park Street house was a very, very good idea. 

Pavel threw up over someone’s shoes on their way out, though, and was rewarded with a punch in the face, right on his mouth, and Hikaru decided also that this would maybe have to be the last time that they came to the Park Street house. 

 

-

 

“Doing okay over there?” Hikaru asked Pavel, who was very much not doing okay. Everyone could probably tell, especially their Phys Ed coach who seemed to really be delighting this morning in making Pavel suffer. But Hikaru was the only one who knew that Pavel’s agony was because, after three days, he was still hungover. 

“Please go and fuck yourself,” Pavel gritted out in between sit ups. Hikaru laughed, and only felt a little bit cruel compared to their coach who walked by a few minutes later and ordered them to do 100 more. 

“Guess we shouldn’t have gone for that vodka,” he said. 

“It was not the vodka.”

“But--”

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Pavel insisted. Hikaru was really impressed at how he was still managing to exercise. He’d only gotten a fraction as drunk as Pavel did, of course, but if he’d tried to do even one sit up on Sunday with his two-and-a-half-beers and shot-of-vodka hangover he would have thrown up, passed out, and died, in that order. Pavel looked sickly and sleep-deprived and a little too sweaty but he was somehow still going. 

“Why? Because vodka was invented in Russia?”

“Exactly,” he said, and looked a little bit crazy when he smiled. 

Hikaru’s memories from that party were ones he knew he’d be keeping very near and dear to his heart. Especially the memories of all of the crazy shit Pavel did, said, and wore. It was really some incredible material that he would be able to tease Pavel with for the foreseeable future. But as much as Pavel blushed at the reminder of his little  _ I love the stars _ cry session, and his dancing, and the story of how he got the bruise and the split lip which at that point he was too drunk to remember, he for some reason firmly stood his ground on the  _ vodka was invented in Russia _ quote. 

It was true, probably, that vodka was invented in Russia, but Pavel just seemed all too happy to tell people that fact, very loudly, considering that he was pretty much estranged from his former life there. So Hikaru really had no idea where this bout of national pride suddenly came from, and he was a little bit afraid to ask. 

He decided he’d just wait until the next time Pavel drank to find out what else was both Russian  _ and _ worth shouting about. 


	8. chapter eight: year three

For the first year and a half or so, when Hikaru was drowning in Academy life and Aiko was still a fairly new professor there, he did her the courtesy of not showing up to bother her whenever he happened to be in the same building where she taught. And then it was Hikaru’s third year and he had adjusted enough to the workload to make free time for himself, and figured that it wouldn’t affect Aiko’s reputation too much if he started visiting her. Plus, he was sure that if he brought coffee with him he could earn some good-younger-brother points too. 

It was funny, because growing up he always hated how Yuki and Aiko just  _ expected _ him to do things for them, like their parents had given them a servant and not a younger brother with a life of his own, and now here he was going out of his way to buy a $6 cinnamon latte--extra-hot--in one of the shops off campus and bring it to his sister without even being asked. 

She grinned so wide when he showed up in the doorway of her lecture hall, though, and he remembered why he still did things for his sisters. 

“I got you something.” He held the coffee out for her and she took it like she was starved for it. Hikaru laughed at the near-desperation. “That bad?”

“I think Dr. Ruiz went out of his way this semester to make sure he was getting the best students.” Aiko took a long sip, “And that I ended up with the worst.”

“How bad can the first-years be if they got accepted into Starfleet?”

“You have no--fucking--idea,” Aiko said, whispering the  _ fucking _ part because the door was still open. She rested her chin on her hand and smiled a little again when Hikaru sat down in one of the chairs in the front row. They made a good pair, when they were both in uniform like this, Hikaru in red and Aiko in grey. It made him understand why people always said they looked similar. They both had that angular face and strong jaw that came from their mother, and the thick eyebrows from their father. Yuki had gotten the good traits, the cute ones, with her round cheeks and perfect eyebrows and small little nose. 

Still, something about the crisp lines of the Starfleet uniform were flattering, Hikaru thought, paired with his and Aiko’s more sharp features. 

Aiko’s hair had started to break free from the low bun she’d put it in that morning, strands coming out to the front of her face. She took her hair down and fixed it while they talked. Mostly more about how stupid Aiko’s students were, but it was almost that time of year when they would be forced to talk about the elephant in the room. The elephant who was graduating and who had already submitted his application to be assigned to a starship for five years. The elephant was Hikaru. 

“Are you nervous?”

“If you keep asking me that I  _ will _ be nervous.” Hikaru had already been tapping his foot up and down since they started talking about this and he saw Aiko’s expression turn serious. He realized he was doing it, then, and forced himself to sit still. “Is that what you’re trying to do?”

Aiko rolled her eyes at him. She finished tying her hair into another, neater bun at the back of her neck, and went back to the last of her coffee. 

“You’re so easy to influence, you know that?”

“Whatever.”

“What if you get put under a captain who sucks,” she asked, “That was one of the things I worried about before I realized I wanted to stay here instead.”

“There are no captains who suck. That’s why they make it so hard to become one.”

“Not for everybody. I’m pretty sure they just handed Jim Kirk the keys to the Enterprise as soon as he proved he was capable of like, tying his shoes.”

“There are no  _ keys _ to a starship,” Hikaru argued, because bringing up Jim Kirk had completely refuted his claim that becoming a captain was really difficult and now his only option was to come at her for semantics.

“You know what I mean.”

“And I’m not going to get assigned to a ship like the Enterprise right after graduating.”

“Now, that,” she tossed her coffee cup into the recycling bin, “You  _ don’t _ know.”

Aiko had to go back to her office to download the presentation for her next class off her computer, so Hikaru walked with her, since it was kind of on his way back to the dorms. Now caffeinated, she walked quickly through the building in what must have been a memorized course, and Hikaru struggled to keep up. 

“Have you thought about Pavel?” She asked next. 

“What about Pavel?”

“About what you’ll do if you aren’t assigned to the same ship. It’s too bad you couldn’t put in a request.”

Hikaru was about to agree to that, and then he realized how stupid and middle-school it sounded, requesting to be assigned to the same starship as your best friend, as if Starfleet cares about that kind of shit.

“I don’t think they take that into account,” Hikaru said instead, “I’m pretty sure it’s just based on where certain crew members are needed.”

“They might look at who you did flight sims with.”

“Oh,” Hikaru searched back through his memory for his past flight sims, for who he worked well with, and he remembered all of the ones he’d had with Pavel. 

Oh. 

Oh  _ no. _

After that conversation Hikaru decided he was just going to remove any possible semblance of an expectation from his head, about where he’d be assigned, who he’d be taking orders from, and who would be sitting at the helm next to him. But he figured it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to cross his fingers anyway that things might turn out how he wanted. 


	9. chapter nine: year three

Hikaru had no idea how long he’d been in the library by the time Pavel found him, hunched over a table and drowning in three year’s worth of Command Track material. They hadn’t even seen each other that morning; either Pavel left before Hikaru did or he never even came home to sleep. Hikaru lifted his head from the PADDs and textbooks and pages of notes around him and Pavel nodded at him in greeting. He definitely looked like he hadn’t slept the night before. Maybe even the last two nights. 

After about thirty seconds of the two of them just staring at each other, wordlessly relating their misery to one another, Pavel sat down in the empty chair across from Hikaru and rubbed his tired eyes. 

“I’m going to die before I even take this exam.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hikaru said, pushing his PADD out of sight for the time being. “I’m already dead.”

Pavel managed a half-hearted exhale of almost-laughter. He rubbed his eyes again and then just decided to drop his face into his hands. Hikaru reached across the table to pat him on the shoulder. He tried to find some words of comfort but, being in the same situation that Pavel was, he knew there were no words that could make it better. Only time. And studying. And luck. Hikaru was going to need a lot of that last one. 

Eventually Pavel picked himself back up and they both studied for a while longer, until Pavel started to lose it again. 

“I can’t read. I can’t even read. I forgot how to read.”

Hikaru looked up at him and the lower half of his face was smiling but the upper half, his eyes and eyebrows and the places where his forehead wrinkled, contained only pure terror. If Hikaru hadn’t already lost his grip on reality Pavel’s face would have been what sent him over the edge. He checked the time. 

“It’s only 21:00--god, stop making that face.” Pavel was still making that face, and now he let out a strangled bark of laughter. Hikaru blinked at him. 

“When was the last time you slept?”

“I really don’t know.” Pavel held his face in his hands, like he needed to be reminded that his head was still connected to his body. 

“Well it’s only 21:00. Let’s go eat something while the cafeteria’s still open and then keep studying.”

Pavel nodded, taking all of the direction he could get. They ate without talking, probably due to the years of information their brains were trying to process and somehow save for future use. Then they trudged back to the dorms, unpacked their backpacks, and started to study again. 

Hikaru didn’t quite lose his sanity to levels that Pavel had in the library until about five in the morning. All of the words of his notes started to look the same, and his head felt like it was going to explode from all of the information he’d been cramming into it for the past thirteen hours, and all of a sudden he looked up from studying and when he looked down again his eyes refused to focus on his notes or his books or his PADD or anything. 

“I don’t think it’s physically possible for me to study for another second,” he said, mostly to himself, but it turned out Pavel was still awake because he shifted on the couch. 

“Do you think you’re ready?”

“I have no idea.” Hikaru looked at him, and his eyes could at least hold onto the image of Pavel slumped on the couch with a textbook open over his chest. “I don’t think anything. I can’t think.”

“What time is it?”

Hikaru checked the time. His headache somehow got worse just from the realization that it was five. In the morning. He’d stayed up all night. 

“We stayed up all night,” Hikaru said, and then let out a bark of laughter which must have sounded unhinged. Pavel blinked at him for a second, probably taking in whatever desperate and crazed expression _ he _ now had on his face, and then he stood up and stretched. He walked over to his wardrobe. Hikaru just watched until Pavel turned around to look back at him again. 

“Come with me,” Pavel said, pulling a hoodie on to make a very stylish combo with his red uniform undershirt and slacks. 

“Where are we going?” Hikaru asked, but he wasn’t saying no. In fact he was absolutely on board with getting the fuck out of their room. He stood up from his desk, feeling sore everywhere, and looked for his shoes. When he’d gotten his shoes on and finally found a jacket from his wardrobe he looked up and saw Pavel standing by the door, sneakers on and a dark blue beanie covering his head, a few curls of hair still sticking out. 

“We are too tired to study and too nervous to sleep. There is a place I like to go.”

Hikaru thought about asking where this place could be, especially with Pavel dressed like  _ that, _ but he quickly realized that he was tired and that wouldn’t have been nice. He decided to just let it be a surprise.

As if it was instinctive, Pavel led the way through campus and then through the city, weaving in between streets and houses in the dark. Wherever they were going, Hikaru had never taken him there. He didn’t know Pavel even left campus at all without Hikaru having to take him somewhere. 

Pavel just walked through the empty streets, knowing exactly where to turn, and took Hikaru straight to Grandview Park. Halfway up the hike to the overlook Hikaru remembered asking if this was some sort of sick joke, ending their all-nighter by taking Hikaru on a fucking hike, and then they got to the top and dawn was just starting to break and Pavel just smiled at him, with his eyes too, this time. 

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. I haven’t been here in a long time.”

They sat down on an old wooden bench and just watched the sun rise. It broke through the fog in one long stripe of yellow, like a second horizon line slowly making its way up the sky. Hikaru looked at the blocks of houses, so small from this height that they almost looked stacked on top of each other, crammed together so closely in this weird little city on the bay. He always tried not to be one of  _ those _ people. One of those people from San Francisco who can never shut the hell up about it, everywhere they go, even if they haven’t even left the bay area. But sometimes he had moments like this where he saw the city that he so often took for granted and realized how happy he was that he got to grow up in it. 

“Grand View, huh?” Pavel asked, when the sky was orange and blue and the clouds were starting to clear just a little bit at the very top. Hikaru snorted. How unbelievably like him to interrupt Hikaru’s sappy hometown moment with the stupidest joke he could come up with in his sleep-deprived brain. 

“So this is where you are in the mornings after your all-nighters?” 

“Most of the time, yes.”

Pavel shifted to sit cross-legged on the bench, closing his eyes and just tilting his face out towards the light. Hikaru had lived with him for three years, and he never knew about this until now. He never knew that Pavel had a life outside of the Academy, that he had secret hobbies and hideouts and routines. Hikaru wanted to ask how he found this place, and how long he’d been coming here, and what else he didn’t know about Pavel’s life, but he realized that if he did it would kind of defeat the whole point of why Pavel brought him out here. 

So instead he stopped watching his friend in confusion, and stopped checking for dirt stains on his cadet slacks, and turned his face to the sun instead. Pavel was right; it really did make him feel better. At least, it made him forget for a little while that he had been so strung out. No wonder Pavel came here.

After a few more minutes of the two of them quietly sunbathing like that, Hikaru said, because he just felt like he had to,  

“I hope we get assigned to the same ship. I’ll need you around to keep me sane.”

“I thought I drive you crazy,” Pavel replied.

“You do. But I think I’d go more crazy without you.”

Hikaru opened one eye to see his reaction and Pavel still had his eyes closed, face tilted to the sunrise, looking calm and happy and totally at peace. 


	10. chapter ten: year three

The weeks between their graduation and their departure date as crewmembers on the USS Enterprise were almost entirely a blur. Not because Hikaru was drinking  _ that _ much, but just because there were so many things that had to be done. There was all of the Starfleet bureaucracy of going on mission, paperwork and medical check ups and orientation classes that some sadist at the Academy kept scheduling for seven in the morning, and on top of that he kept getting invitations to go out, from people he hadn’t even been friends with until after the graduation ceremony, and then there was Hikaru’s entire family insisting on filling every available gap left in his schedule. 

He couldn’t really blame his family for that, though. Hikaru turned out to be the first of his siblings to leave home. Aiko, who also went to Starfleet Academy and would have been the first, ended up deciding not to go on mission during her last year, and instead chose to stay in San Francisco and start a teaching track. And Yuki had gone to Berkeley, which was basically in San Francisco anyway. So out of the three of them Hikaru, the youngest, was going to be the first child to move away from home, and he was quite literally taking it to the extreme, and hurling straight into space.

Hikaru tried to remember this when he was being dragged around the city at all stages of hungover, to his sister’s favorite places and his relatives’ houses and wherever else they insisted that he  _ needed _ to see before leaving for five years. He only wished he could have had Pavel to suffer with him, but Pavel had gotten an exemption for one of the weeks of orientation and went back to see his parents for the first time in three years. Hikaru tried to remember that, too, when he was feeling smothered by his own family, because based on his inferences about Pavel’s, it must have been way worse on his end. 

When Pavel finally got back, Hikaru was so busy that they barely even saw each other for the first few days. Finally he escaped to his dorm after refusing to sleep another night at his parent’s house, and Pavel was lying facedown on top of his bed. Hikaru knew he didn’t sleep like that, and he also knew that this had become Pavel’s go-to position when he was feeling overwhelmed, but still he asked,

“You up?”

“Yes.”

Pavel pushed himself up and sat cross-legged on his bed. Seeing him in civvies never failed to make him look as young as he actually was. His cadet uniform, as much as he was never able to really fill it out in the shoulders, betrayed his age, but now in his blue jeans and a worn out t shirt he was back to being seventeen. Hikaru always thought this Pavel made more sense, anyway, as much as he had learned over the years how to really command himself as a cadet, even being younger than everyone else. Sometimes in their third year Hikaru would spot him across the quad and barely recognize him for a moment until he saw those illegal patterned socks peek out from under his slacks. 

His socks today had little bicycles on them. 

“How was your trip?” Hikaru dared to ask. After three years the subject of Pavel’s family was still sort of a no man’s land. Pavel frowned a little bit but he said, 

“Not so bad. Although they don’t seem to understand that I have no choice but to start off on the ship as an Ensign.”

“I’m sure you’ll get your second stripe pretty fast.”

“Yeah. It doesn’t matter so much to me, though. It’s just a title.”

Hikaru walked over to flop onto his own bed. 

“What have you been doing?”

“Spending more time with my family than I did when I lived with them.” He pressed his face into the bedspread, realizing how tired he was. He probably could have fallen asleep if he just kept his eyes closed for at least thirty seconds more. “I think I’ve come to rely on you too much for moral support.”

Pavel laughed a little bit at that. 

“I’m serious. I don’t know how I went to these things in the 18 years before meeting you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Pavel said. 

“And everyone keeps asking me where you are, you know.”

Pavel smiled down at his hands in his lap, and then when he looked back at Hikaru again his face had become unreadable. It almost looked like he was about to say something serious. Hikaru propped himself up onto his elbows. 

“Should we do something?” was what Pavel ended up saying. 

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something before we leave.”

“I guess we could.” Hikaru tried to think about what it actually was that they did in the rare moments when they’d had free time during the past three years. Other than academics, extra credit, occasionally getting drunk, and hanging out with Hikaru’s family, his mind couldn’t find anything. “We missed our chance to go ice skating this year.”

“I don’t think we’ll ever get another chance to do that.”

“Well, not at Union Square, at least.”

Pavel looked at the wall above Hikaru, thinking, and then his eyes went wide. 

“I never went to the beach,” Pavel said, like it was an epiphany, “I lived in California for three years and never went to the beach.”

“You lived in San Francisco for three years.”

“There are beaches here, aren’t there?”

“Well….yeah.”

“Let’s go to one before we leave.”

“Do you have a wetsuit?”

“Why would I need a wetsuit?”

 

-

 

Cut to a few hours later, after stopping at Hikaru’s house to get wetsuits, and inevitably staying for an extra forty-five minutes to talk to his parents, and then finding the closest beach which had actual sand and room to swim. Hikaru stood on the shore with his feet in the water, shielding his eyes with his hand as he watched Pavel shiver a few meters away, absolutely determined to have a good time. 

“How’s your San Francisco beach day?” Hikaru called out to him, and he really could have warned Pavel, he really  _ should _ have, but this was just too good. Pavel’s nose and the tips of his cheeks were pink from the cold and he was neck-to-ankles dressed in a black and blue wetsuit. It was definitely the opposite of what he’d had in his head when he asked to go swimming earlier. 

Pavel glared at him as the icy water lapped at his shoulders, and then he swam closer. 

“Are you already done?” He asked once Pavel got to the shallow part and stood up, visibly shivering. 

“You are an asshole.”

“I didn’t want to spoil your California dreams.”

Pavel snorted, scoffed, more like, and splashed the water around him as he walked up to Hikaru. Before he got there he tripped and fell over. His legs were probably so cold that he’d lost control of them, and then Hikaru allowed himself to feel a little bit like an asshole, and he walked over to help Pavel up. 

As soon as they’d joined hands so Hikaru could help Pavel out of the water Pavel yanked on his arm, pulling him down with him, and Hikaru felt his entire body freeze up when he landed on his knees and was submerged into the cold all the way to his neck. 

For a few seconds he couldn’t say anything, the shock of the temperature change blocking any possible reaction, but the face he was making must have been enough for Pavel to explode into laughter. That little bitch. Hikaru couldn’t tell if the fall had been fake or if he’s just come up with that trick as soon as it happened. Regardless, now he was in the water and he was going to get hypothermia. 

“Who’s--the asshole--now--you fuck--” Hikaru finally gritted out, and he looked at Pavel’s little self-satisfied grin and splashed his face with water. “Choke on it.”

Against his better judgement Hikaru stayed in the water with him for a little while after that, because now him and Pavel were competing to try and get the other underwater for longer. Hikaru would run towards the shore on shaking legs only to be dragged back in while he marveled at how the hell Pavel was managing to pull his weight. Hikaru thought he’d won when he pushed Pavel’s head underwater, but when Pavel reemerged he had that look on his face, the same one that prefaced them getting kicked out of the ice rink at Union Square, except this time there was nobody around to intervene. Hikaru was on his own, trapped in the freezing water with a seventeen year old lunatic. 

“That was a bad idea,” Hikaru said, teeth chattering, as he tried to wrestle out of his wetsuit in the tiny bathroom of a nearby grocery store. Pavel let out a choked, desperate sounding laugh from the stall next to him. 

“I can’t feel my toes,” Pavel replied, and Hikaru could hear the sound of Pavel’s wetsuit finally slapping against the floor. Hikaru was still at war with his own, skin cold and clammy and somehow refusing to let go of the suit so Hikaru could put dry clothes on. 

Then he heard Pavel sneeze. 

“Bless you.”

“If I get sick from this I’m blaming you.”

“And how would that be my fault? This was your idea.”

“You could have stopped me.”

“If I hadn’t taken you swimming today you would have complained to me about it for the next five years.”

It was silent for a minute. Hikaru finally managed to get free from the wetsuit and nearly sighed in relief. He reached into his bag for his clothes. 

“It’s true,” Pavel finally said. 

“I know it’s true,” Hikaru said as he pulled his shirt over his head, “That’s why I took you swimming.”

They took turns sitting underneath the electric hand dryer and trying to get it to dry their hair off. Pavel sneezed another time and glared at Hikaru, and Hikaru just rolled his eyes. 

“Don’t Russian people do that thing where they submerge themselves in freezing water in the winter?” He asked. 

“ _ I don’t know _ . Russia’s a big place.”

“Well you need to take me there sometime.”

Pavel stopped messing with his hair and looked up at him through their reflection in the mirror, his face almost unreadable again. He kept making faces like that, lately, faces Hikaru wasn’t used to and had no idea how to interpret. 

“You want to go to Russia?”

“Of course I do. It’s only fair, you know, now that you know everything about my life.”

Finally Pavel smiled, and Hikaru at least kind of knew what that meant. 

“I’ll take you, then, someday.”


	11. chapter eleven: year three

Pavel hesitated to join Hikaru for the rest of his family outings, which Hikaru thought was strange, especially considering that in the past year he had been there for every holiday, birthday party, and spontaneous dinner, and he even went down with them to Pasadena last summer for their extended family reunion. Hikaru guessed that maybe he was just feeling the weight of the incoming change and didn’t feel like socializing. The anxiety about their upcoming mission, which he couldn’t even really form expectations for in his head, was freaking Hikaru out too, of course, but socializing with your own family and socializing with your best friend’s family definitely require different energies from a person. 

Still, Pavel finally agreed to join Hikaru and his family for dinner on their last night. His parents cooked curry rice (Hikaru’s favorite) and fried pork cutlet (Pavel’s favorite)nand Yuki and Aiko brought cake, and sitting at the table Hikaru realized that Pavel really  _ had  _ been missing from their family dynamic during the last few weeks. He spoke casually with Hikaru’s parents and joked with his sisters and ate with chopsticks so naturally that Hikaru could nearly forget the year he had spent training Pavel to use them. It was funny, really, how much was different about Pavel, and about their friendship, from when they first met at the Academy. And that was only three years ago. The two of them were about to embark on a five year mission. Hikaru wondered what type of person Pavel would be in five years, what type of person  _ he _ would be. He didn’t need to think about whether or not they would still be friends; that was sort of a given. 

“Are you nervous?” Hikaru’s mother asked Pavel. 

“It’s not too late for you guys to back out, you know,” Yuki said, grinning from the other end of the table. Hikaru rolled her eyes at her. It was maybe the hundredth time in a month that he’d heard those words. Pavel just smiled and shook his head. 

“I have to go,” he replied. 

“You know, I know someone who works for American Airlines. You guys could just fly planes together instead.”

“Oh, give him a break, Yuki.” Aiko gave both Pavel and Hikaru a deliberate look. “Don’t listen to her. You two go out there and do exactly what you want to do.”

“I’m just going to miss them, is all.” 

Hikaru smiled at his sister even as she made a show of pouting down at her empty plate. Their mom just responded by scooping more food onto it. 

“Eat. It’ll make you feel better.”

“It’s only five years,” his dad said, leaning back in his chair, and Hikaru tried to accept that this was a casual thing to say as if five years wasn’t nearly a quarter of his lifetime up until now. Still, he didn’t want to fret over it. His orientation classes had given him so much information about living on a spaceship that his brain was too full to even discern what he should worry about, anyway. 

After dinner, and after they cleaned up, and once everyone was done fussing over them and they’d taken more than enough pictures together in the living room, Aiko and Yuki left with half a dozen goodbye hugs to both of them and promises to call. His mother shooed the two of them away soon after, swearing that if they stayed any longer she was going to become a crying mess, and Pavel and Hikaru ended up on the sidewalk outside his house, not entirely sure what they were supposed to do next. They were going to be taking off into space in twelve hours, but it was difficult to conceptualize from the curb of Hikaru’s childhood street. He watched as the sun set behind the rooftops and the street lights turned on and there was nothing at all to indicate that tonight wasn’t just a normal night like any other. 

After standing on the sidewalk and contemplating life for a good five minutes, which was five minutes too long on top of all of the contemplating he’d been doing since graduation, Hikaru looked over at Pavel and asked if he wanted to go get a drink. 

“Shouldn’t we get some sleep?”

“We can sleep on the ship.”

“Did you become so irresponsible when I was away?” Pavel asked. He put his hand on his hip, the corner of his mouth curling up a little bit, and Hikaru shrugged. 

“I guess I just don’t know when I’ll get the chance again to drink terrible cocktails at a university bar. And I’m buying.”

Pavel shook his head but he was smiling, and Hikaru already knew that that was all the convincing he needed. 

 

-

 

Pavel said, half drunk,  _ I think I’m in love with you, Hikaru _ and the only thing Hikaru could think of to say in response was  _ um _ . He had been acting weird that whole week, a little more awkward and sometimes almost shy, but Hikaru just figured it was because he was stressed out about starting their mission. It wasn’t until Pavel had blurted that out, after they’d spent forty five minutes sitting at the bar having an unusually dry conversation, that Hikaru realized Pavel had been acting weird because he was holding that confession in every time they talked. He just had no idea how long Pavel had been building up to this. 

He was  _ seventeen _ , for fuck’s sake. Hikaru hadn’t known anything about love when he was seventeen, he hadn’t felt it then, he still hadn’t now. And here Pavel was, always jumping into things way too early. He was still a kid. What could he see in Hikaru anyway? They were friends, of course. Better friends than Hikaru had ever experienced before, and he knew Pavel probably felt the same. Their friendship was close, but never romantic. Hikaru had no clue where this could have come from.  

And Hikaru had no fucking clue how to handle it, either, so he decided to get the both of them even more drunk. Maybe Pavel would take it back, or forget about everything he’d said, or be drunk enough that they could pretend they don’t remember afterwards. Either scenario would be worth the hangover he’d have during his first day on the Enterprise. 

A good portion of their classmates seemed to have the same idea. The bar was quickly filling up with all of the recent graduates about to ship out in the morning. Hikaru wondered how long it would be before the school actually implemented a rule against it. 

He waved over the bartender and ordered them two shots each. Pavel just tensed up even more in the barstool next to him as he realized that  _ um _ was going to be Hikaru’s sole response to what Hikaru guessed could have been his first time confessing his love to someone. That thought alone made his heart sink. He turned to the bar to try and distract himself and downed his tequila shot so fast he nearly spit it out. 

“Man, remember that first time you got drunk?” He asked, trying to sound neutral and friendly and normal and not like he was internally panicking and maybe about to throw up.  

“At your family’s Christmas party, you mean?” 

“You were so tiny. I was worried you would get alcohol poisoning.” 

Pavel shot him a look. It probably wasn’t the best time to make comments about his size, or his age, regardless of how much he’d grown up in the past two and a half years since then, because Pavel could probably tell by now that that was a lot of the reason Hikaru didn’t know how to respond. They had settled too comfortably into a bit of a big brother-little brother type dynamic, and both of them were smart enough to know there was no easy way to get out of it. 

“That was not my first time drinking you know. Only the first time in front of you.” Pavel said. The bartender set down their second round of shots. Pavel downed his immediately, and his mind must have been too focused elsewhere because Hikaru didn’t even see him flinch.

“Fair enough.”

They stayed at the bar and drank and their conversation never stopped being resigned and difficult as they forced themselves to talk about anything other than the one thing they  _ really needed to talk about _ , the reason Hikaru kept catching Pavel’s sullen glances in his peripheral vision. 

Usually Hikaru liked to dance. It had become a tradition for him, for both of them, ever since that house party they went to a few months earlier, to drink and go dancing and embarrass themselves and then stumble back home, holding onto each other for support.

This time there was almost a meter between them on the sidewalk as they made their way back to campus. Hikaru felt like shit, as if he had skipped the fun part of being drunk and went straight to the hangover. 

They reached their dorm and Pavel sat heavily down on one of the steps leading to the entrance. His eyes were red-rimmed and dark underneath, his face sunken and pale like he had already lost sleep over this. And maybe he had. 

Hikaru sat down next to Pavel. Going upstairs would’ve meant facing the fact that all of their things were packed, that they had mere hours before they left the only planet they knew for five whole years. And now Hikaru didn’t even know if they would be friends in that time, if Pavel would find any reason he could to avoid him. Hikaru sighed, quietly, even thinking about it. 

Pavel dropped his head into his hands. He was either two seconds from crying or two seconds from throwing up. Probably the first one. Definitely the first one. Hikaru was actually the worst person in the world, he was realizing.  

“Hey, uh, are you doing okay?” Hikaru’s words were slurring a little bit, which only made his already stupid question sound stupider. 

Pavel lifted his head and glared at him, because  _ he _ knew that that question was absolutely stupid,  and he knew that Hikaru already knew the answer to it, because Hikaru was the reason for the answer, and maybe Hikaru was too drunk but the look on Pavel’s face was actually really terrifying. 

“So that’s a no,” he says against his better judgement. 

“I tell you I’m in love with you, and all you say is ‘ _ um _ ’.”

“What am I supposed to say?” Hikaru threw his hands into the air, more angry at himself than anything, for not seeing this coming, for not knowing how to respond, for having to reject his best friend’s feelings. He was honestly wishing that he felt something back just so he wouldn’t have had to do that, and  _ that _ really made him feel weird. 

“Tell me that you don’t love me. That I am still a child to you. That you can’t see me in that way. I already know--I’ve figured it out--but at least  _ say  _ it out loud so I can stop thinking there is a chance.” He spat out, as if the whole thing disgusted him. Hikaru could sense the self hatred behind it too, and it cut painfully through his chest. 

“I…” Hikaru looked away. He was always so terrible with things like this, with being serious and saying serious words and looking into someone’s eyes when he did it. If only Pavel could’ve been as much of a coward as he was, then they could at least have avoided it altogether, dropped hints and skirted around the subject and reached a vague consensus before slowly drifting apart during the next five years. 

When Hikaru thought about it, though, his method was probably infinitely worse than addressing it head on like Pavel wanted. 

“You’re not a child to me,” Hikaru finally forced out, his voice sounding empty and dry and weird, “You’re just--I don’t--”

“You don’t see me that way,” Pavel supplied, and the way he said it broke Hikaru’s heart. Pavel was his friend, his best friend. Sure, he didn’t have feelings for him, but it hurt Hikaru just the same to see _ him _ hurting. Especially when he remembered that it was really, technically, all his fault.

“I don’t see you that way,” He repeated, staring down at his feet. 

Hikaru had forgotten what it felt like to sit in silence with Pavel and not feel comfortable. He wanted to crawl out of his own skin, their spoken words and unspoken words rattling around in his brain. 

“We are still friends,” Pavel said after a while, his voice more restrained now, “I think I’ll need some time, but we’re still friends.”

“I’m sorry,” Hikaru whispered, and he looked back up and into Pavel’s sad, drunk, tired face.

“It’s okay.” Pavel smiled as best as he could manage. 

With no more left to say they both stood up and walked back to their room in silence, somehow more ready to face the next day now than they were earlier that evening. Maybe it was because whatever was waiting for them in space would be easier to navigate than their friendship from this day forward. Hikaru got the room code right after three tries, and he could’ve blamed it on the alcohol for the way his hands were shaking, even though he knew it was deeper than that, that his body was clearly handling his emotional situation as poorly as his brain.

He kicked off his shoes and fell face down onto his bed, not even bothering to change clothes or get underneath the sheets. 

“I’m going to go throw up now,” Pavel said. Hikaru managed to laugh a little bit at the clinical nature of his voice.

“Okay. Goodnight,” he mumbled, and either Pavel didn’t say goodnight back or Hikaru fell asleep before he could hear it. 


	12. chapter twelve: year four

With Jim Kirk captaining the Enterprise, things were pretty much guaranteed to go wrong at any and every opportunity where they  _ could _ go wrong. After the first handful of close-calls it just became the crew’s own version of normal. But until then, it definitely took some adjusting. Starfleet’s post-graduation orientation was long and grueling but definitely did fuck-all to prepare them for  _ this _ , that was for sure.

Sulu would return to his quarters, shaken up and sometimes actually,  _ physically _ shaking, after pulling extra long shifts, after just barely piloting them to safety, after facing situations that he would have thought even too exaggerated to be used as Academy flight sims. It was nights like that during their first few months on the Enterprise that he wished he and Pavel were talking. Entire shifts spent sitting next to each other, staring down the possibility of death together, and still the silence stretched long and tense between them in the turbolift. They reached the E deck and it was like Pavel couldn’t get out of there and down the hall fast enough. 

They did still talk, when it was necessary. They worked across from each other at the helm, and even though Pavel had no trouble communicating with him civilly while they were on the bridge (a far cry from that nightmare Saucer Separation sim two years ago) once they got off their shift it was like Hikaru was a stranger. He knew that it had to be that way, that Pavel needed time and distance after that night at the bar. He knew it. That didn’t mean he had to like it. 

He would come back to his quarters shaking, his hands numb from how tightly he held the controls, and he couldn’t help but wonder how Pavel was doing, if Pavel was okay, if these missions were taking a toll on him, too. He had to remind himself that Pavel wasn’t gone forever. Eventually, hopefully, he would get his best friend back. 

 

-

 

They all adjusted. Nurse Chapel gave periodic reminders of the importance of stress management and mindfulness practice. The beam-down crews were ordering spare uniforms in bulk whenever they had the chance. Hikaru’s hands loosened around the controls, sometimes. Things didn’t get better, but  _ they _ got better, more capable, more brave, more reckless, more like Captain Kirk, Hikaru thought. And those close calls and near-catastrophes didn’t rattle him like they used to in the beginning. He could fall into bed after a double shift where alarms were sounding on the bridge and the ship was being fired at and it was his responsibility to get them out alive, and he could fall right to sleep. Sometimes Pavel’s wellbeing didn’t cross his mind; usually it did. 

So when the next near-death experience actually did rattle him, Hikaru was a little bit surprised. It started as just a routine patrol mission, better known as a Punishment for Jim Breaking Like A Dozen Starfleet Regulations mission, and then they ended up toe to toe with a renegade group of Klingons. Egos were threatened, weapons were drawn, Jim and Spock beamed onto the Klingon’s ship to attempt some last-ditch effort at diplomacy and prevent all-out warfare. It became a hostage situation. Hikaru was Acting Captain. Somehow things turned out alright. 

Somehow they did, because Hikaru really couldn’t remember what had happened during those hours he spent as Acting Captain. He stumbled back to his quarters and everything just seemed like a weird, vivid dream. The kind of dream you forget as soon as you wake up, even though the feeling of it stays with you and you can’t seem to shake it. 

He couldn’t remember what he said, what orders he’d made, or even if he was sitting in the Captain’s chair. It was like as soon as he was put in charge, his brain switched onto a different setting, a non-Hikaru survival mode. No second-guessing, no stopping to think, no fear, just the single objective: get everyone out alive. And he did. And he had no idea how he pulled it off. 

Hikaru vaguely remembered meeting Jim and Spock in the transporter room, walking alongside them on the way to sickbay, listening to the Captain making some sort of joke about the whole thing and then, in what must have also been a joke, remarking on how Hikaru was going to make a great captain himself some day. It must have been a joke. All Hikaru could think, when they made it to sickbay and Doctor McCoy immediately started nagging Jim, was that he needed to lie down. 

He made it back to his quarters and climbed into bed, only stopping for as long as it took to take off his boots. As soon as his head hit the pillow he let out an involuntary noise, somewhere between a groan and a sigh. Before he could really even finish his first conscious thought, which was going to be  _ what the fuck just happened _ , someone rang the buzzer outside his door. Hikaru hauled himself out of bed again to go answer it. 

“Hi.”

It was Pavel. He looked exactly how Hikaru felt. Wired. Exhausted. Overwhelmed. His eyes were a little bit bloodshot, his hair messy and sticking up from running his hands through it all day. Hikaru remembered the way his face used to turn red when he was stressed, and he could still see traces of that warmth in his cheeks. All of that, and he was looking at Hikaru like he was afraid of him, or maybe afraid  _ for _ him, or maybe both at once. 

“Hey,” Hikaru said, and he hated how awkward it felt. “Do you want to come in?”

“Yes.”

Pavel walked in and for a second it looked like he was moving to sit down on the couch, and then he stopped. Instead he stood still just a few feet from the door, turned to Hikaru again. Even though he was the one who had shown up at Hikaru’s quarters, who had wanted to come inside, he looked over at him like he was breaking some sort of rule, and not in the way he liked to break rules. 

“What’s up?” Was all Hikaru could think to ask. What else was he supposed to ask, anyway? He and Pavel had been ignoring each other for months and now Pavel shows up at his quarters after what felt like the most overwhelming shift of their mission so far. This was what Hikaru had wanted, anyway, after all of their overwhelming shifts before this one, and maybe he would have remembered to be glad to see him if he wasn’t so desperate to go to bed. 

“I wanted--” Pavel stopped, furrowed his brow, started again, “I wanted to make sure you are doing okay.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“So are you doing okay?”

“Honestly?” Hikaru asked, and Pavel nodded, like it was something very serious. Hikaru started to wonder exactly what had happened that day. Maybe there was a reason his brain was repressing all of it for the time being. 

“I have no idea. I can barely even remember what happened.”

Pavel nodded again, even though Hikaru could tell he didn’t really understand what that meant or how he was supposed to respond. The tension was settling, just a little bit. Hikaru watched Pavel’s shoulders relax, his face soften, but he still looked uncomfortable and awkward. It was the first time Pavel had been in Hikaru’s quarters, but still, there was no reason for him to feel like he couldn’t relax. They used to live together, for fuck’s sake. They lived together for three years. Hikaru was about to ask, or maybe even order Pavel, to sit down on the couch and make himself at home, but Pavel spoke before he got the chance.

“Are you hungry?”

It was a simple question, but underneath it was the unspoken invitation, if Hikaru was hungry, for them to eat together. Hikaru didn’t even know if he was hungry, to be honest, but that didn’t really matter. 

“Uh, yeah.” Hikaru replied, “Yeah I am.”

 

-

 

There was a moment, maybe even a minute or two, when they sat across from each other at the mess, half empty in the middle of the night with just the overworked bridge crew, when everything felt normal again between them. When Hikaru found himself laughing at something Pavel was ranting about, about their life on the Enterprise, or maybe it was the way he said it, the tone of his voice and that sharp, dry, occasionally morbid sense of humor. He laughed, first because it was funny, and then because it felt good. He and Pavel together again; it felt so good that for a minute Hikaru about everything else that had happened that day. 

 

-

 

“Sometimes on this ship I feel like I could sleep for 24 hours and still wake up tired,” Pavel said to Hikaru a few days later, first thing in the morning while they rode the turbolift to the bridge. Hikaru raised an eyebrow at him, trying not to look too amused by the sheer amount of turmoil that showed in his voice and his face and the slump of his shoulders. 

“With the patrol mission we just got slapped with I’m pretty sure you could nap at the helm.”

“That...is an incredible idea.”

Hikaru breathed out a laugh, and he didn’t miss the way Pavel’s mouth quirked up just a little bit, almost a smile. 

“I’ll cover for you,” he whispered as the doors swished open. 


	13. chapter thirteen: year four

After the hostage incident with the Klingons, and Hikaru’s shift spent in the Captain’s chair (Pavel recounted it to him later, that he had indeed sat in the Captain’s chair, along with other details about his behavior and facial expression and tone of voice that Hikaru hadn’t been able to process), and after a few weeks of bureaucracy, and a weirdly long ceremony on Starbase 47, Hikaru was promoted to Lieutenant. Pavel pulled him into a hug as soon as they met each other out in the hallway after the ceremony. Hikaru didn’t even question it, he just hugged him back, and he could feel Pavel finally stepping into that void that he’d left behind six months ago. 

They spent the next few days docked in Starbase 47, because the Captain was more than a little bit overdue on submitting all of his formal mission reports, and decided while he was drowning in bureaucracy to give the crew a bit of a break. So everyone who wasn’t Jim Kirk was out that night celebrating Hikaru’s promotion. There was really only one place to celebrate, which seemed to be part bar and part nightclub, with a small little dance floor and plenty of circular booths that were quickly filled up with the tired, alcohol-starved crew of the USS Enterprise. Hikaru squished into a booth with Pavel on one side and Janice on the other and a handful of Engineering officers and maybe even Nyota, if he had made her out correctly under the dim, changing lights. Drinks just kept showing up in front of him, and he didn’t know if they were all supposed to be for him or not, but it was _ his _ party, after all. 

It was his party, he reminded himself, before his mind came up with another responsible, well-adjusted thought. He’d just been promoted to Lieutenant in his first year on a ship. It was time to get drunk. 

 

-

 

A few hours later, Hikaru was tired of dancing and didn’t want another drink shoved in his face and he finally stumbled outside to try and get some fresh air into his lungs. The bar was underground, which seemed like a bad idea to begin with, and he dragged himself up the stairs and out into the street. There were only a few people out. All of them were from the Enterprise, doing the same thing he was after suffocating in an underground bar all evening. Even with how dizzy he was Hikaru spotted Pavel immediately. 

Really though, he could’ve spotted him with his eyes closed, that was how flourescent the colors of his shirt were. It was another Hawaiian shirt--another  _ party shirt _ , if you will--this time with different colored fish all over it. Pavel was leaning casually against the wall of the building next door, staring up at the dome that covered the entire base and, probably, past it and into the stars. Hikaru felt himself smiling as he walked up to him, half because of that fucking shirt and half because of course he would ditch the party downstairs just to stand out here and look up at the stars. 

Sometimes he forgot how well he knew Pavel. He could have come up with the entire scenario in his head without any inspiration, the way he was dressed and the fact that he was out here and the way he leaned against the wall with his neck craned back so he could see as many stars as possible. 

If he was sober he probably could have come up with something witty to say in greeting, some sort of joke, maybe, or ask if Pavel was going to start crying again. Instead he just said, 

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Pavel said back, still looking up at the stars. He lingered for another second, and then he must have decided he was done, and lowered his head back to look at Hikaru. Based on his slow movements and his half-lidded eyes Hikaru could tell that he was just a little tipsy. 

“Aren’t you having fun at your own party?” Pavel asked, and Hikaru sighed, letting out the last of the smoky, stuffy club air from inside his lungs. 

“It’s alright. I lost you and Janice and realized I don’t really know anyone in there.”

The corner of Pavel’s mouth turned up into a smile. Hikaru realized that he looked older. He had already celebrated his eighteenth birthday on the ship, but that wasn’t it. He was physically the same between his last day being seventeen and his first day being eighteen. Maybe it was in the way he acted, how he spoke and how he looked at things, like he knew exactly how big the universe was now and had come to terms with it. 

“So you came out to find me?”

It was another one of those moments where Hikaru could sense, even with his thoughts steeped in alcohol, that his response was going to really matter. Even if it was sort of a joke, what Pavel had just said. Even if Pavel had thought he was making a joke too. 

“Came to get some air.” Hikaru leaned against the wall next to Pavel. “Finding you out here was just a bonus.”

There were a few seconds of silence between them where Hikaru was unsure if he had said the right thing. He’d told the truth, though, which he hoped would be the right thing. Finding Pavel outside  _ had _ made him happy. 

“Do you want to be friends again?” Pavel asked plainly.

Hikaru was a little bit caught off guard by the question, both because he thought they’d already decided they were going to be friends again, and because out of all of the things about Pavel that he had remembered so well, his bluntness had somehow been left out of it. Maybe because Hikaru had secretly been hoping that they could just repair their friendship without needing to have conversations like this. 

“Yeah,” Hikaru said, “I thought that was obvious.”

Pavel looked like he still had to think about it, his brows furrowing enough for a little wrinkle to form in between them. 

“What,” Hikaru asked him.

“I guess I thought you might feel different after I took some time away from you.”

“Nope.”

“ _ Really? _ ”

“Why don’t you believe me?”

Pavel shrugged, and Hikaru would have rolled his eyes if it wouldn’t have made him too dizzy. 

“Stop being such a teenager,” he said instead, and Pavel laughed at that, and probably at how whiny he sounded trying to argue after so many drinks. “Of course I want to be your friend, you loser.”

“I still have two years of being a teenager,” he responded, “which you should know if you want to be my friend.”

“Stop saying  _ if _ like I’m going to change my mind or something.”

Pavel laughed again. 

“You never drink this much. It’s kind of funny.”

Hikaru exhaled loudly, what could have been a sigh if he wasn’t already breathing uneven and a little heavier than usual. He hoped that drunk him had done a good enough job having this conversation that sober him wouldn’t need to make up for it. But if Pavel was making jokes now, instead of questioning everything he said. That was probably a good sign. 

“I outrank you, you know,” Hikaru said to the sky. He could see in the corner of his eye that Pavel was looking up at it too, now. “You should think about that before you make fun of me again.”

“Yes sir, Lieutenant Sulu.”

 

-

 

Pavel teased him mercilessly through his hangover the next day, and the day after that when they were back at the helm and Hikaru was  _ still  _ a little bit hungover. But he hadn’t seen Pavel have that much fun in a long time, even if it was at his expense, and he found that he really didn’t care at all. So he let Pavel make fun of him. And then when their shift was over they instinctively walked to the mess together, and Hikaru watched Pavel laugh more over dinner. It wasn’t until afterwards, though, when they just kept hanging out without needing to agree on it, instead of awkwardly parting ways, that Hikaru really believed that everything was going to be okay between them, now.

They ended up sprawled on the couch in Hikaru’s quarters, watching a movie and having to pause it about twenty separate times just because they kept finding things to talk about. Hikaru had been waiting for this, for them to be able to just hang out again like nothing had happened, but that wasn’t exactly how it felt. It didn’t feel like nothing had happened between them; it was better. Something definitely happened, something that would have killed a typical friendship, and they still made it out alright. That was way better than just going back in time to how they were before. Hikaru didn’t know why that had always been the best case scenario in his head.

Pavel wasn’t the same, but neither was he. The things that they had seen already in their first year on the Enterprise made sure of that. Hikaru was just happy that he didn’t have to worry, anymore, about going through it alone. 

 


	14. chapter fourteen: year six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of a major time jump here. since this story is really just focused on their relationship I didn't write a lot of enterprise action, but if you want to fill in the gaps, go watch some TOS episodes (or even better, some TAS episodes) and then come back ;)

Hikaru scanned the mess hall looking for the top of Pavel’s head. During regular meal hours it was his most recognizable trait in a sea of yellow, red, and blue uniforms. Finally he spotted Pavel’s light brown curly hair and wove through with his dinner tray, sitting down in the empty seat across from him. They never explicitly planned to eat their meals together, it just happened so often that they both would try to keep an empty space open for each other. Pavel half-smiled when Hikaru sat down, clearly in the middle of chewing. 

“I hope you didn’t have anything planned for the next shore leave,” Hikaru said. He started on his own dinner, putting together a bite of whatever mystery pasta their chef had come up with. The closer they got to shore leave the more it became clear that they were running out of non-replicated food stores. This quarter was no different. He ate anyway. 

“Why?” Pavel cocked his head to the side. 

“Yuki scheduled her wedding so that we’re both able to make it. We’re not allowed to say no.”

“Oh,” Pavel looked like he had to think for a second, “so which one is she marrying?”

“I honestly can’t remember.”

They both laughed and shifted their focus back to eating. After Pavel finished he got up to make tea and then drank it slowly while Hikaru ate. 

“She’s getting married in San Francisco?”

“A little bit outside, I think. They’re renting out a bed and breakfast. But until the wedding you can stay at my parents’ house if you want. Unless you’d rather stay at the Starfleet accommodation.”

For every shore leave on Earth Starfleet provided accommodation for ship crew while the ship went under routine inspection and repairs. Depending on the time of year it was either student dorms at the Academy or a rented out motel somewhere outside of San Francisco. Most people, especially the ones who were from Earth and therefore had somewhere better to stay, chose to travel and stay with friends. Hikaru looked forward to staying at his parents’ house, to be honest. The first shore leave back on Earth it had been weird, being in his childhood bedroom after everything he’d seen, but this time he was really in the mood for eating homemade meals and playing some of his old video games. 

And attending Yuki’s wedding, of course. He wasn’t surprised when Yuki made it clear that Pavel wasn’t just invited, but  _ required _ to attend. Hikaru just didn’t know how much convincing it would take. 

“I was thinking I would go back to visit my parents, but I guess now you give me a good excuse why I can’t.” Pavel smiled, but it wasn’t completely clear whether he was happy about postponing his return to Russia for the next shore leave. He hadn’t been back for a while. 

At the time of their first shore leave, maybe eight or nine months into their mission, things were still a little awkward between the two of them, and Hikaru hadn’t been able to decide if he should invite Pavel to stay with him, and Pavel didn’t bring it up, either, before he chose to go back to Russia. Hikaru went home, and they maybe messaged each other twice during the whole two weeks. Pavel was vague when he recounted his trip, as usual, saying bland statements about seeing his parents. It was really the only topic that Pavel was ever bland about. 

Hikaru had needed to remind himself that Pavel had always been like that when he talked about his family, and that it had nothing to do with the current state of their friendship. Still, when he was back in San Francisco surrounded by things that reminded him of their time in the Academy and how they used to be, he made up his mind to try and get Pavel to open up eventually. He was sure it would take a long time. After all, Hikaru had broken his heart almost immediately after Pavel finally agreed to take him to Russia someday. He was sure he wasn’t the only one who felt the juxtaposition of that. 

But they still made a lot of progress towards the end of that year, in becoming friends again. Good enough friends that they no longer had to plan to hang out together, instead just showing up in each other’s space. And the rest of the crew noticed it too. They were starting to get accused of being able to read each other’s minds on the bridge. Hikaru had even heard some remarks about the two of them being a cute couple, which, thankfully, they were able to laugh at. 

What he really thought was funny, though, was that nobody (save for Janice down in Engineering) actually knew that they had been friends before the Enterprise. They all just assumed it had happened from being next to each other at the helm, as if the two of them ever had enough free time during their shifts to get to know each other that well. Hikaru let them think that, because it felt kind of special to know that they had their own story underneath it all. 

“I’ve never been to a wedding before,” Pavel finally said, and Hikaru felt relieved, because he knew it meant that Pavel didn’t need to be convinced. 

 

\- 

 

So Yuki’s fiancee was Victoria, who Hikaru  _ did _ know about, he figured he had just been so surprised at the fact of his sister finally settling down that his brain couldn’t sort through all of the information it held about her past relationships. The two of them had been together for four years, now, though, which served as a sort of reminder to Hikaru that the Earth had in fact continued to turn even after he’d left it. 

All of his conversations with his sisters and his parents became focused on the upcoming wedding, to the point where Hikaru would catch himself thinking during his shifts about whether or not he needed to buy a new suit or what song he was going to request from the DJ. Not that any of those things mattered, really, until he was back on Earth for shore leave. 

Although once they were finally down there it appeared that in her free time Yuki had made all of those decisions for him. He and Pavel barely got a full night of sleep at his parents’ house before they were being dragged into town to get their tuxedos fitted. Fitted, because apparently they’d already been picked out before the two of them even arrived. 

Hikaru felt sleepy and possibly jet lagged-- _ ship lagged? Was that a real thing?  _ he was going to have to look that up later--and could barely manage more than standing and raising his arms at various angles while the tailor put pins in his suit jacket. He was more grateful than ever that Pavel was there with him to take some of the attention away from him. And even more grateful that Pavel had had a bit of a growth spurt in the past few years, which meant he took  _ all  _ of the attention away from him. 

“Look at his shoulders,” Yuki whispered to Aiko, giggling behind her hand, but it was audible enough that Hikaru could hear it, and could see Pavel squirming, meaning he heard it too. “Look at how big his shoulders got.”

“I was more surprised to see that he’s taller than Hikaru now.”

Now Hikaru was the one squirming. 

“He’s not taller than me.”

“Pavel, go stand next to him,” Aiko waved her hand at him to gesture that he should move over to the mirror where Hikaru was standing. Hikaru glanced at their reflections and tried, in vain, to save his argument. 

“Okay, it’s like, three centimeters, maybe.”

Pavel smirked at his own reflection, quirking his eyebrows up. Neither of them were particularly tall, not like some of the other people on the crew, but Pavel being shorter than him was something Hikaru must have taken for granted long enough to not notice him growing. 

Now he couldn’t ignore it anymore, and Pavel was definitely more than three centimeters taller than him. 

“Relax, Hikaru, you’re still older than him at least,” Aiko said. 

“Yeah,” Yuki added, “So you’ll die first.”

Pavel clearly tried to cover up the laugh that came out and he just ended up sort of choking while Hikaru whipped his head around to glare at Yuki. Yuki smiled back at him from the couch. She was lounging across it in a white sundress with one of the many bridal magazines from the coffee table spread out across her lap, definitely trying to squeeze as much enjoyment out of the title of  _ bride-to-be _ as she could. Aiko just sat in her blue jeans with one leg crossed over the other, iced coffee in one hand and the other hand scribbling notes on that afternoon’s to-do list. Hikaru realized how much he had missed them. It almost--almost--made him react a little better at the next joke Yuki made, about how she’d ordered his suit jacket a size up under the assumption that his muscles would be bigger by now. Almost. 


	15. chapter fifteen: year six

Hikaru had made sure to keep an eye out for Pavel during the first few Sulu family events he’d dragged him to. During their third year in the Academy though, after two Christmases, a Thanksgiving, and his mom’s birthday party, it became clear that Pavel could navigate Hikaru’s relatives well enough on his own. Depending on the crowd sometimes they would stick together the whole time anyway, sitting at a table in a corner somewhere and talking the whole night as if they were just hanging out on their own. 

Yuki’s wedding reception, though, turned out to be a pretty big party full of other young people. They were renting out a bed and breakfast about 45 minutes outside of San Francisco, and the entire garden surrounding it was filled with strings of lights and tables and two separate open bars. After the ceremony in the afternoon Hikaru had to go pose for golden hour wedding portraits with the rest of the family. When he got back to where the reception was already underway, shoulders stiff and cheeks cramping and ready for some damn champagne, Pavel seemed to have vanished into the crowd of Yuki and Victoria’s friends and coworkers. He shrugged and went to find champagne first. 

“Where’s your other half?” 

Hikaru looked next to him and it was Aiko’s old roommate Alina, who had also become a pretty regular guest to family functions as well. Her and Pavel got along really well too, but it looked like she hadn’t been able to find him in the crowd yet, either. 

“Haven’t seen him since I left to get the portraits taken.”

“Weird. I thought you two were a unit.” She asked the bartender for a beer and leaned against the bar while she waited. It looked like she had been growing her hair out, braiding it in one long, brown plait that went down her back, but other than that she was the same Alina that Hikaru had met years ago. The pale blue dress she had on was a good color for her, even though she seemed a little out of her element in formal wear. 

Speaking of out of element, Hikaru still didn’t know where Pavel could’ve gone. 

“I was going to go looking for him, but I guess I don’t worry as much as I used to about him accidentally getting drunk.”

Alina snorted. They took their glasses and walked a few steps from the bar to one of the standing tables. Hikaru scanned the garden for the top of Pavel’s head but couldn’t seem to find it, and then he remembered that Pavel had styled his hair this morning. He’d walked out of the bathroom and into their shared room at the bed and breakfast, hair parted to the side and slicked back with enough hair gel that it only had a little bit of a wave left in it. Hikaru had blinked at him, totally confused at this sudden costume change, and Pavel didn’t even have his suit on at that point. Once he was fully dressed up it was like he was looking at a completely different person wearing Pavel’s face. 

“How’s ship life?” Alina asked, pulling Hikaru’s attention back. 

“It’s good. I can’t believe how long it’s already been since I first left.”

“Three years, right?”

“Almost.” Hikaru paused, maybe realizing for the first time that they had passed the halfway point in their five year mission and he hadn’t even noticed. Sometimes it felt like he was so absorbed in everything on that ship, entire weeks would pass without his having counted them. 

“What are you going to do when it’s over?”

He hadn’t even thought about that, either. Growing up, especially when he was getting older and trying to get into the Academy, he had always been planning his life out at least three or four years in advance. But Hikaru realized wasn’t thinking at all about what the next thing was going to be. For the first time, he imagined his mission ending two years from now, and realised that he had no plan at all. Hikaru smiled. 

“I really have no idea.”

 

-

 

Hikaru  _ did _ find Pavel, after he and Alina had gone back to the bar for another drink. Pavel was propped up against the bar, practically joined at the hip with another of Victoria and Yuki’s bridesmaids. She was short, tucked under his arm, with silky black hair that brushed across her shoulders when she moved. It looked like the two of them were having some sort of conversation, although Hikaru was sure it couldn’t have involved any of Pavel’s signature talking points, because this girl was really way too interested in him. 

Pavel’s eyes found Hikaru and his face lit up. Immediately Hikaru could estimate that he’d had at least four drinks. 

“Hikaru, my friend, this is Frances. Have you guys met?”

Bold of Pavel to assume that there were any of his sisters’ friends Hikaru didn’t know. 

“Yeah. Hi Frances.”

Frances was one of Yuki’s friends from the church she went to sometimes. Hikaru had met her before maybe twice but he didn’t really know her, and he didn’t know how he felt about her and Pavel flirting at each other so blatantly. He was pretty sure she was maybe 22 or 23, but it seemed like she was the drunker one. And she kept looking up at him with this dreamy expression like he wasn’t a 19 year old nerd who’d had to watch three hair styling tutorials this morning. Hikaru didn’t know what part of the two of them being so close to each other grossed him out more. 

“Are you two having fun?” Alina asked, sharing a look with Hikaru equivalent to  _ I am also extremely confused by this _ . 

“Frances is a really good dancer,” Pavel said, and Frances laughed at the compliment. 

“Pavel is a navigator for Starfleet,” was what she had decided to respond with, probably because she didn’t know enough about him to say anything else. Hikaru cringed a little bit at the way she pronounced his name in two distinct syllables,  _ Pav El _ . Even so, he couldn’t wait to make fun of Pavel with that starting tomorrow morning. 

“Is he?” Alina pretended to be shocked. 

“The two of us actually sit next to each other at the helm,” Pavel told Frances, motioning to Hikaru. She said something about how cool and interesting that was but it was clearly only directed at him. She didn’t even turn her face to look at Hikaru for one second. Hikaru felt relieved when he was finally given another champagne glass by the bartender. 

“Did you know,” Pavel said, “That the first man to ever be sent into space was actually a Russian?” And Hikaru wanted to groan for five straight minutes, except Pavel hadn’t been talking to him, hadn’t intended to tell Hikaru for the third or fourth time about the first man in space being Russian (which Hikaru knew even before he met Pavel). He was talking to Frances, actually, who apparently did not know that piece of extremely common knowledge and looked over at him with such amazement as if Pavel  _ himself _ was that first man to go into space. Hikaru could barely resist the urge to chug his champagne before everyone else got their glasses, but he had manners, so he waited. 

All four of them clinked their glasses together, and as much as he would have loved to endure more of whatever grossness was happening between Pavel and his sister’s church friend, Alina saw Aiko across the garden and the two of them escaped. 

Alina immediately started recounting to Aiko what they had just witnessed. Hikaru just stood there and listened to their conversation and tried to shake the uncomfortable feeling that had been with him ever since he’d seen Frances mooning like that over his best friend. His best friend who was still nineteen, if only for just a few more weeks. Something about it, he wasn’t sure, was just rubbing him the wrong way. 

But if he had felt awkward about the two of them flirting, seeing them on the dance floor together was even worse. And that was nothing compared to the fact that Pavel never showed up to their room after the reception ended. Hikaru didn’t wait up for him that long, because he had just socialized and posed for photos and been passed around from relative to relative for nearly twelve hours straight. When he got out of the shower and saw that Pavel’s side of the room was still empty, he just let it go and got in bed. He wasn’t going to fault the guy for seeing an opportunity and taking it. Pavel wasn’t  _ that _ much of a kid, anymore. If he wanted one of Yuki’s friends to take his virginity, Hikaru honestly didn’t care. 

He went to sleep. 

 

-

 

When he woke up, Pavel’s bed was still empty and neatly made from the day before. He had gone to bed half-expecting to wake up a few hours later when Pavel burst in, but the fact that he didn’t come back made him worry that Pavel could have done something more irresponsible than hooking up with a bridesmaid at his sister’s wedding. 

Everything turned out to be fine, though. Hikaru found Pavel by himself at one of the tables on the porch, surrounded by breakfast plates and looking only a little bit hungover. Even though the thought crossed his mind that maybe Pavel could be waiting for his  _ date _ from the night before, he still sat down in the other chair with his toast and tea. 

“Good morning,” Pavel yawned. 

“Long night?” Hikaru asked, and nope, he didn’t like this. He didn’t even like making a joke about the fact that Pavel had just had a one night stand. He couldn’t really rationalize it to himself, but being fully aware of it just really didn’t sit well with him. At least he wasn’t wearing the same clothes. His hair was fluffy and back to normal, too. No more suit or hair gel or flirting with girls or any of the other things that had seemed so out of character yesterday. 

“I guess,” he said, looking a little bit confused, like maybe he’d expected Hikaru to just avoid that subject altogether. 

“I mean, you don’t have to talk about it. At all. Trust me.” Hikaru lifted his mug to his face, hoping he wasn’t coming off too much as the protective older brother when he said, “I don’t need to know the details of how my best friend lost his virginity.”

“I wasn’t a virgin,” Pavel replied neatly, and Hikaru almost choked. He paused for a second, forced the tea down his throat, and tried not to look so surprised that Pavel could be offended. 

“Again, I don’t need to know the details.”

“But you’re surprised.”

Hell yeah Hikaru was surprised that his best friend, not even twenty years old, who he’d known since he was fifteen, who had never expressed an interest in anyone (except for that night that they don’t talk about), was sexually active. Not only because he was so young, although that was definitely part of it, but because none of them had time for that kind of thing. Hikaru sure didn’t, between work hours and the greenhouse he’d ended up in charge of and beam-downs and  _ sleep _ , there was barely enough time for him to text his mom that he was alive. So he had no idea how Pavel could have even pulled it off, age and flirting ability and fashion sense aside. 

“Well...yeah.”

“Why?”

It almost seemed like Pavel was starting to enjoy watching Hikaru squirm over this conversation topic. His eyes had that mischievous look that they sometimes had when he was making a joke or solving an impressive math problem, or breaking a minor Starfleet regulation. 

“I don’t know I guess I just...didn’t realize you were doing that kind of thing.”  _ That kind of thing. _ Hikaru couldn’t even say the word sex. It was as if he felt like he was supposed to be protecting Pavel’s innocence about it when Pavel clearly didn’t need it. Even the sex talk he’d had with his parents as a kid had been easier for him to process. 

“Are you as bad at having sex as you are at talking about it?” Pavel asked, and this time Hikaru really did choke. He pushed his mug away and figured it could wait until this conversation topic was over. He stared at the liquid swirling around while he tried to think of something to say. 

After a minute it seemed that Pavel was able to work it out in his brain why Hikaru was being so weird about everything. Hikaru himself was actually a few seconds behind. It wasn’t that Pavel was young, exactly, it was that Hikaru was older, and he still hadn’t been with anyone. And apparently being busy with work wasn’t actually an excuse. 

“Oh.”

Hikaru looked up at him, pressing his mouth into a flat line, and shrugged. 

“It just hasn’t happened yet.”

Hikaru hadn’t really ever talked to anyone about this. Pavel was the only person he was close enough with that they could’ve been open about this part of their lives, but the confession of love when Pavel was seventeen, even though it hadn’t ended their friendship, had sort of closed off the topic of romance and sex completely. 

And now they were diving right into it. 

If anything, Pavel’s reaction, or lack of reaction, made Hikaru feel relieved. He didn’t laugh or make a face or mention the fact that Hikaru was three years older than him or anything like that. He just took it in stride and started talking about himself, offering his own secret in exchange for Hikaru’s. 

“Last night was the worst sex I have ever had.”

Hikaru snorted. 

“Do I want to hear this?”

“Yes, because you will get to laugh at me.”

They spent the rest of the breakfast hour with Pavel talking about all of his sexual encounters from age seventeen until the night before, when Frances from Yuki’s wedding apparently kept asking him to speak Russian during sex because she thought it sounded hot. Somehow the more they talked about it, the less awkward Hikaru felt. He wondered why he had ever thought there were things him and Pavel  _ couldn’t _ talk about. 

“So what did you say to her.”

“I don’t know! What the fuck are you supposed to do when someone is asking you to talk during sex in a language you don’t really use for sex??” Pavel covered his face with his hands, “I just started explaining to her a recipe for Pelmeni.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright alright alright. i know what you're thinking.  
> one of the reasons i came up with this story other than just my undying love for these two is the fact that a lot of chulu material is dominated by the whole blushing-virgin-chekov thing. i'm not completely hating on this trope, because AOS pavel is Indeed a cutie pie, but i decided for this i really wanted to turn that trope completely on its head, just to see what would happen.  
> i mean i could get on my soapbox about whether or not there might be an issue with the tokenization of pavel's virginity but i think id rather just let the story speak for itself
> 
> anyway if you stick with me, i love you


	16. chapter sixteen: year six

The wedding took up most of their shore leave, but once it was over they still had three days left, and Hikaru decided he needed to take Pavel to a beach that might actually be warm. It was the middle of the summer and it seemed like everyone, after being cooped up in a starship in deep space, had the same idea. They went down the coast where Janice and some other people from Engineering were occupying a dinky motel, and got a room. Everyone else had been there for nearly two weeks already and Pavel seemed determined to catch up in terms of tanning. 

Turned out he didn’t tan so well, or even burn, really. It was like the sun barely touched him, leaving only the tips of his shoulders and his nose pink by the end of the day. 

“Aren’t you glad I made you stay here instead of going back to St. Petersburg?” Hikaru asked on their second day, when he and Pavel were already tired of swimming and just stretched out on beach towels under the sun. 

“Yeah, the sun doesn’t exist over there, actually.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Hikaru peered over his sunglasses at the game of volleyball going on further down the beach. He really didn’t know anyone that well, except for Janice, but apparently they’d missed the memo about where the rest of the bridge crew was spending their shore leave. At least he had Pavel to be antisocial with him, though, and Janice to talk to occasionally, when she took a break from volleyball or swimming or flirting with whoever was working at the ice cream stand that day.

“Where do you think the rest of the bridge crew ended up?”

“Probably they all are at the Academy doing something boring,” Pavel said, and Hikaru wasn’t sure if the dryness of his voice was meant to be a joke, like they were also doing something boring. Lying down in the sand was way more interesting than lying down in bed, wasn’t it. 

“Even the Captain?”

“I’m sure he has overdue reports to turn in.”

Pavel flipped over onto his stomach, folding his arms under his head. From this angle, Hikaru would maybe accept that he had grown a little, in height and width. Maybe. He turned his head to the side, sunglasses going off-center from his face, eyes still closed. He sounded completely zenned out when he added,

“Or he is somewhere making love to Doctor McCoy.”

“Oh  _ god _ .”

Hikaru tried to push the image out of his head by turning back to look at the water, or the volleyball match, or, good god, he would stare straight into the sun if that was what it took. He lowered down from his elbows to lie flat on his back next to Pavel. 

“Please say something to get that thought out of my head.”

“You don’t think it’s true?”

“How much free time do you have at the helm to come up with this shit?”

“Just consider it next time the Doctor comes to the bridge for no reason other than to lean against the Captain’s chair.”

He might have had a point, because the Doctor did do that,  _ all the time _ , but still. 

“Thanks, I’ll be sure to never do that.”

Hikaru looked over at him and Pavel was smiling a little bit, like he could almost laugh, even though his eyes were closed and his sunglasses were crooked and he was definitely starting to look pink on his back and shoulders. 

“You  _ are _ glad that we came to the beach, right?” Hikaru asked, because he had just realized that their entire shore leave had just been him dragging Pavel places. Sure, he hadn’t wanted to go back to St. Petersburg, anyway, but Hikaru never really asked if there was anything else he might have wanted to do instead. 

“Yes. It’s what I had in my head years ago, before you made me freeze to death in a wetsuit.”

Hikaru laughed at the memory of Pavel white as a sheet, shivering in his wetsuit at the _ San Francisco beaches  _ he so desperately wanted to visit. Pavel clicked his tongue. 

“I still plan to exact my revenge for that, you know.”

“Sure you do.”

“Why do you ask, anyway?”

“I guess I forgot to make sure we were actually doing things you wanted to do. More than half of your shore leave was all about my sister’s wedding.”

“I did want to come to the wedding.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Of course I did,” Pavel said, “did you fall on your head and forget that I’m an honorary Sulu.”

Hikaru thought for a minute. Everyone else in the family definitely saw Pavel as an honorary member, whether it was in the form of a fourth sibling, or as Hikaru’s secret boyfriend, or, like his mom tended to view him, as a stray kitten who came to their door one Christmas and now needs to be indefinitely fed and cared for. Pavel’s absence would have been felt for sure, Hikaru just hadn’t thought that Pavel actually wanted to go in the first place. 

“I just don’t want you to feel like you’re obligated to go to family stuff with me.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

Pavel turned over to his back again, stretching a little bit on his towel and then relaxing, like he might be preparing to fall asleep. He adjusted his sunglasses lazily. 

“I like your family. I always did.”

That was enough to make Hikaru feel better about it, and the image of the Captain and Doctor McCoy ( _ making love _ , as Pavel so delicately put it) was out of his head finally, so he decided to drop the subject and let the silence draw out between them. Maybe Pavel really would fall asleep, spread out on a beach towel like he had all the time in the world. After dealing with Yuki’s wedding drama for the past week and a half he had probably earned it. 

Hikaru fell asleep, too, lulled by the ambient sounds of the waves and the volleyball hitting against hands and elbows, and it was his fault for forgetting that thing Pavel had said about exacting revenge for their last beach trip. The next thing he knew he was waking up underneath the volleyball net with sand being kicked on his face. A volleyball bounced off of his chest and he heard the entire group of Engineering officers erupt with laughter. 

 

-

 

Pavel didn’t even come close to tanning like the rest of the crew did who were staying at the beach. He did have what seemed to be an indefinitely sunburned nose, and just the faintest sunglasses tan which Hikaru didn’t notice until he saw him under the bright lights of the bridge. 

He made sure to inform Pavel of his sunglasses tan as loudly as possible, even if it didn’t actually get the attention of the rest of the crew, if only to see his momentary panic and subsequent eyeroll, and hear his sarcastic comeback. Pavel didn’t have any comeback other than  _ let me live _ , but he didn’t seem to be all that annoyed either, and the two of them were nearly laughing as they took the ship up into space. 

It was exactly how he had imagined things would be when they left San Francisco for the first time on the Enterprise. Sitting across from each other at the helm and needing only facial expressions to communicate and sometimes having so much fun that someone from the senior crew--usually Doctor McCoy--barked at them to knock it off. 


	17. chapter seventeen: year eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i thought about dividing this thing into part one and part two because the mood of the whole story changes in this chapter but instead i'm just writing a little note:  
> get ready for angst and h/c  
> make a cup of tea for these next few

The only thing Hikaru could remember feeling was burning. Intense burning, all over his torso, like he was on fire. He kept moving his hands over his shirt, trying to put the fire out, but nothing helped. He collapsed onto the ground, tried his best to Stop, Drop, and Roll, but the second his knees hit the dirt it sent shocks through his entire body, and he couldn’t think straight enough to remember what it was that he was supposed to do next. 

_ Roll _ , he thought,  _ roll to put the fire out. I am on fire, aren’t I. I must be. _

Before he could move again, something hit his back, right above the shoulder blade, and if he had thought he was already on fire, he had no words for the feeling consuming his shoulder. He swatted at it anyway, somehow, or at least he thought that’s what he was doing. He couldn’t really feel his arms when his brain was so overwhelmed with the pain coursing through his body. He didn’t know he’d torn a part of his uniform shirt off until the yellow fabric was in his hands and he was staring down at it, and all of a sudden he wondered if his shirt was supposed to be yellow or red. The fabric in his hands seemed to be turning red. 

He stayed on his knees on the ground, staring at the yellow-red fabric in his hands, and tried and tried to push the pain he was feeling far enough back in his brain to think, just long enough that he could decide what to do. 

_ That’s my blood. _ Was his first conscious thought. He took another deep breath. If it was his blood, that meant he was bleeding, which meant the burning wasn’t fire. It had to be something else. He let the shirt fall out of his hands and pressed one palm to the side of his torso, where the pain was the strongest. It came back bright red. 

_ I’m bleeding. _ Was the next thought. Given the circumstances, he was actually making pretty good progress in figuring out the situation. He stared down at his hand, at the blood dripping down his wrist, at the yellow fabric on the ground at his knees, and tried to access his last memory before this. He remembered beaming down, coordinating with the rest of the party. He’d seen a clearing in the forest. He must have separated from the group to take foliage samples. After all, the official report had listed this planet as uninhabited, so there was no reason to be afraid of exploring the wildlife. 

He couldn’t remember exactly what he had been doing, or what had hit him, but  _ something _ had hit him. And he finally figured out what the situation was, in simple terms. 

_ We aren’t alone here.  _

Hikaru had never been in a near death experience before. He had read about them, and seen action movies. He would always get mad at characters who came under attack and tried to fight back even though they were clearly weaker, or tried to run with nowhere to go. The best thing to do, in his opinion, was act like you had already died.  _ Because if you look like you’re dead, _ he would say, usually to Pavel as they sat on the couch together watching the movie,  _ it’s not like they’re going to keep shooting you. They’ll just move on to the next victim.  _

So that’s exactly what he did. It wasn’t difficult considering the amount of pain he was in, to collapse face first into the dirt and stay there, motionless. He had no idea how long he had been on his knees staring at his hands, but it had already felt like an eternity. And then laying on the ground like that, maybe this was where he would be for the rest of his life. Or maybe he was already dead. 

When the burning in his torso and shoulder decreased slightly to a sharp, stabbing sensation, he figured that meant that he was definitely dying. But the pain was subsiding just enough that he was able to notice other things. His vision had been blurry since he’d hit the ground, but now he was starting to see things with his eyes which he had kept open and unblinking, as part of his dead person routine. First he was looking at the dirt in front of him, and then his eyes fixed past it, and he saw his communicator. He focused on it as hard as he could, to make sure it was real, but he must have been imagining it. Because the longer he looked at it, it started to make noise. 

If he wasn’t playing dead, he would have tried to reach for it, to see if it would disappear when his hand touched it. But he knew if he started to move, he would be shot again. At least, he assumed he had been shot. He didn’t know how so much pain could show up on his body without anyone within sight to have caused it. It had to have been someone with some sort of gun or phaser or something like that. 

He stared at the communicator for so long that his vision went blurry again, and he wondered how long he would have to act like he was dead before it finally happened. 

Hikaru realized, sometime in between when he first collapsed into the ground and when he stopped seeing altogether, lost in how much he was hurting, that his grand survival plan of pretending to be dead didn’t include any sort of escape or counterattack, or anything else that would have actually guaranteed his survival. He thought about what Pavel always said about it:  _ If you are about to die you’re not going to remember this great plan of yours. Your instincts will force you to fight or to run. _

Well, if Hikaru survived, he could at least tell Pavel that he was wrong. 

The parts of his body that weren’t in pain had completely disappeared from his mind, like there was no feeling in them at all. He felt only three points of pain, maybe four. If it weren’t for that, his body would have felt the same way it did right before falling asleep. He wondered if this meant that he was about to lose consciousness. 

And then he got hit again, but by something different. It didn’t burn like before, but it still hurt. He could feel pain now, too, in his throat. He might have screamed, but none of his other senses were really working well enough to tell him anything. 

He wasn’t shot, he decided, but there was something there. Or someone. He could feel his cheeks, all of a sudden, but they didn’t hurt. His head was moving. Someone was holding his face. Hikaru thought at first that this was the enemy, checking if he was really dead, so he played dead. 

And then he really was moving. This time he could hear himself scream when his body was lifted off of the ground. And he could hear something else. After a few seconds he realized-- 

It was his name. 

“Hikaru, please. Answer me, please. Hikaru.” 

His senses started coming back to him, first hearing, and then he tried again to focus his eyes. He couldn’t yet. 

“Answer me, Hikaru. Are you okay. Please. Please, Hikaru. Answer me.”

Hikaru understood what they were saying, and he almost felt like he knew that voice. He struggled to respond. The first word that he tried to say tore through his chest and he could only breathe out and breathe in. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I have you.”

Hikaru understood that, too. He blinked his eyes, and all of a sudden he could see just flashes of the person above him. And then he saw enough. It was Pavel. He wished he could have said something, tell Pavel that he didn’t need to look so afraid, but he couldn’t speak. But at least he could see Pavel, and he could hear him. 

“They are going to beam us up. But I have you. It’s going to be okay.”

Another sensation was flooding through Hikaru’s body now, not fire, but warmth. His body felt warm and soft, like it was melting down into the ground, but it couldn’t be, because he wasn’t on the ground anymore. Arms were holding him, he realized, Pavel’s arms. Underneath his back he was cushioned against his knees, as well. He couldn’t be melting and contained at once. 

Everything he felt was too much and he couldn’t understand it anymore. He looked up at Pavel’s face, still full of fear, and tried his best to keep his vision from going blurry, to listen to his voice. 

“Don’t close your eyes, look at me.”

“Stay awake, okay.”

“They will beam us up now.”

“Hold on to me.”

Hikaru couldn’t really hold on. After focusing on seeing and hearing there was no energy left in him to move his arms, but Pavel had him. He watched Pavel’s face, and when everything disappeared into a cloud of light beams he couldn’t help but feel scared until he saw Pavel leaning over him again. 

“We’re here.”

“Don’t move, okay.”

“They’re coming.”

 

-

 

The realization that Hikaru was back on the enterprise didn’t hit him until he was rushed to sickbay, when Pavel’s face wasn’t the only thing in his line of sight anymore. And maybe the question of where Pavel had gone and why he wasn’t there anymore was what had kept Hikaru awake as he was taken through the halls of the ship and lowered onto a biobed and swarmed by nurses. He saw face after face above him and waited for one of them to be Pavel. 

It felt like hours had passed of people and hands and flashing lights and cold metal tools and hypo injections and then finally the pain that had consumed his conscious thought and blurred his vision and blocked his ears, was gone. 

Hikaru blinked, not sure if he had just woken up or if he finally realized he didn’t need to dissociate from reality anymore. He turned his head to the side and looked, and finally he could see everything. He was in sickbay. The lights were low, and he could only see as far as the privacy screens surrounding his biobed. There was a short little machine next to his bed, probably the kind that monitored his vitals. It beeped low and steady, following his heart rate. But he could hear it perfectly. Next he thought about his hands, and he spread his fingertips and smoothed his palms across the thin blanket covering his lower body. He could feel the fabric under his hands, he could  _ move _ his hands. So he was really alive. Thank fuck. 

He turned his head to look at the ceiling, barely visible in the dark of the room, and then he turned his head to the other side, and there was Pavel. He was awake, and staring at Hikaru with almost the same fear that Hikaru saw in his face earlier. He must have been watching Hikaru the entire time. 

Hikaru wanted to tell him not to be scared anymore, but as soon as he opened his mouth he felt a hand on his arm that stopped him. 

“Don’t talk, it might hurt you, still.”

Even after Hikaru nodded in understanding, Pavel’s hand stayed on his arm. His hand was warm. Hikaru hadn’t realized yet that he felt cold. He flicked his gaze down to Pavel’s hand, and even in the dim light he could see that it was still covered in dirt, and, he guessed, Hikaru’s own blood. He looked at Pavel’s arm, following blood stains up his sleeve. At the tears in his uniform shirt, the dirt on his face. One of the dark spots on his jawline could have been a bruise. And then Pavel’s eyes, watching him still. He really, really wanted to tell Pavel that everything was okay, so he could stop  _ looking _ at him like that. 

“You’re stupid, you know that?” Pavel said. Hikaru couldn’t respond, since he apparently wasn’t supposed to speak. He managed to raise his eyebrows, though. 

“I always thought your  _ pretending to be dead in the face of danger _ idea was a joke. I didn’t think you were so stupid that you would do it.”

If Hikaru could have shrugged, he would have. If he could have spoken, he would have first said that he wasn’t really in a reasonable state of mind when it happened, and then he would have commented on what was apparently Pavel’s terrible bedside manner. He watched a tear make its way onto Pavel’s cheek, and then another, and he wished more than anything that he could say  _ something _ to him. Instead they just stayed there like that. Pavel’s hand held Hikaru’s arm tightly underneath his elbow, and Hikaru watched as he didn’t bother to wipe away the tears that kept coming. Hikaru wanted to comfort him, but all he could do was lay on the bed and keep breathing. For now, that would have to be enough. 

The feeling of Pavel’s hand on his arm was there even as Hikaru started drifting out of consciousness from the drugs. It might have been the last thing he felt before falling asleep. 

 

-

 

He woke up again, maybe just a few hours later, because the pain medications had started to wear off. His heart sped up, remembering the pain he had been feeling before, realizing that it was coming back. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to not let his breath get too short. The more he could feel his chest and shoulder starting to ache and burn the harder it got. Hikaru felt his bed shifting and he opened his eyes, saw Pavel lift his head from where he must have been sleeping, hunched over the foot of Hikaru’s bed. 

Pavel blinked his eyes for a moment as he woke up. He must have been sleeping lightly, if the harsh sound of Hikaru’s breathing was enough to wake him up. Pretty quickly Pavel seemed to notice how Hikaru was straining against his biobed and he all but jumped to attention. He took Hikaru’s wrist in his hand and Hikaru looked up at Pavel, now standing and leaning over his bed. 

“I will go get somebody, okay. Just breathe.”

And then the hand on his wrist was gone, and Hikaru closed his eyes and could hear Pavel’s footsteps disappear behind the privacy screens. He did what he was told, or tried to, tried to keep his rhythm of shaky breaths as the sharp, stabbing, burning sensation only continued to grow. He was so overwhelmed by it that he didn’t notice when Pavel had come back with Doctor McCoy, could only barely feel the injection in the side of his neck, and then like a wave the pain was slowly, steadily disappearing again. 

The lights were on, now. Doctor McCoy was still there when Hikaru came back to reality, checking the monitor of the little machine next to him. There was a concern in his face that Hikaru had never really seen before, not that he had spent very much time in sickbay. It made him wonder if his injuries really  _ had _ almost killed him. When Leonard caught Hikaru staring at him, his expression softened. 

“You’re going to be fine,” was all he said, and Hikaru watched him study the monitor some more, before preparing another hypospray. After he’d injected that one, too, he left. Hikaru turned his head, already feeling heavier in his whole body. Every bit of pain that left was only replaced with exhaustion, and he didn’t know if it was from the drugs or if he had spent so long bracing himself  that he’d tired himself out. Or maybe some combination of both. Pavel was still there, in a chair pulled up to the other side of the bed. 

Hikaru was sure he hadn’t slept that long, but he was still confused to see that Pavel hadn’t changed out of his bloodstained uniform shirt, hadn’t washed the dirt off of his face. He could see, now, which marks on Pavel’s face were bruises and which ones were streaks of dirt or blood. There were tear tracks, now, too, which were what gave it away. But Pavel hadn’t left to clean himself up, not even after Hikaru had fallen asleep. He had stayed the whole time. 

“How is it, now?” He asked quietly, twisting his hands together in his lap. Hikaru watched Pavel’s hands, and he must have subconsciously decided to reach his own hand out across the bed, inviting Pavel to take it. Pavel held Hikaru’s hand with both of his own, probably desperate just to hold on to  _ something _ , and Hikaru took a deep breath. 

“It...hurts.” He managed to say, voice cracking and barely above a whisper. 

“It should go away, soon, the Doctor said.”

“I know.”

Hikaru didn’t know what else to say. Not just what else he was capable of saying before his throat got too dry from the sterile sickbay air, but what he could say in the face of everything that had just happened. He wanted to tell Pavel thank you, but not just for running to get him help a few minutes ago, and not just for saving his life, but for being who he was in the first place. For being the kind of person who cared enough about Hikaru to rescue him, to know him enough to not give up on him. Even if he wasn’t drugged up in a biobed he wouldn’t have been able to communicate any of that. 

“Don’t cry, the pain will stop.”

He hadn’t even realized he was crying, or when he could have started. Pavel’s hands wrapped tighter around his own and Hikaru needed Pavel to hold all of him tightly like that, to hold him like he did when they were against the hard ground on Ceron VI, covered in dirt and blood, waiting to be beamed up. He needed Pavel’s arms like that again, keeping him safe, keeping him alive. 

“I...want to sleep,” was all that came out. 

“You will.” Pavel’s voice was so soft, warm against the cold robotic sounds of the sickbay. Hikaru’s eyelids were heavy, and he closed his eyes. The last of the pain left him with a hot, humming sensation in his chest, and then all he felt was tired. He sank into sleep, anchored by Pavel’s hands again. 


	18. chapter eighteen: year eight

Hikaru actually wasn’t sure what had woken him up the next time, his body must have just decided he was done sleeping and drifted back into consciousness. Once he was fully awake and could look around he saw that the lights were on, and the privacy screens were gone from around his bed, and when he looked to the side, Pavel was gone too. 

“He’ll be back,” Leonard said from the other side of Hikaru’s bed. Hikaru turned his head. His head and his hands seemed to be the only parts of his body that he wasn’t afraid to move. 

“What?”

“Chekov. I made him leave sickbay to shower, but he’ll be back, I’m sure.”

“Oh.”

“You’re talking. That’s good.” Leonard passed a tricorder over his torso, and Hikaru looked down at his chest for the first time in the light. His undershirt was gone, replaced with clean white bandages across his ribcage, and another coming from under his arm and back over his shoulder. Leonard didn’t seem like he was going to check underneath them, for now, which was good, because Hikaru wasn’t sure if he was ready to see what an injury which hurt  _ that  _ much was going to look like. 

“Do you remember what happened down there?”

“No...not really.” 

At least, Hikaru didn’t remember anything useful, only lying face first in the dirt and staring at his communicator, and then Pavel’s face, and his voice, and his arms holding him up off of the ground. But he didn’t really know what had happened before. 

“Well we can’t seem to figure out what hit you. There were no clear entry points and nothing under your skin, so the best guess right now is that you were hit with some sort of energy beam. Had to have been strong enough to break your ribs and bust the skin open, though.”

Hikaru wrinkled his nose. 

“Yeah,  _ you _ didn’t have to look at it. One of my nurses threw up once we got your shirt off.”

Leonard was scribbling notes into a clipboard while he talked, and then he put it under his arm and looked back at Hikaru. Hikaru hadn’t ever needed to be a real patient here, to have his own biobed. The only one-on-one time he’d spent with Doctor McCoy in the past four years was during short medical check ups. So having his undivided attention was a little bit strange. When Leonard came to the bridge, he was always shadowing Jim, but here, this was his own territory. And Hikaru seemed to be the only patient right now, on top of that. He’d never thought about it before, but it came as no surprise that Leonard was a really good doctor. He had a way of saying things that made Hikaru feel like everything was going to be fine, but he didn’t seem to need any extra emotion to accomplish that. It was just the right amount of straight truth and reassurance. 

Around Jim he always seemed to be more expressive, but here he just looked calm and sure of himself. Hikaru could only imagine everyone else who ended up half dead on a biobed having the same thought, looking up at Doctor McCoy and his strong, familiar face, his quiet and capable demeanor when he worked. 

“But you’ll be fine,” Leonard continued, “Nine broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. We were worried you could have been poisoned with something, but nothing’s shown up yet. I’m not concerned.”

Unlike the night before, when Hikaru was panting and writhing against the pain shooting through him, this time he really believed Leonard when he said everything would be fine. 

“Is anyone else hurt?” Hikaru asked. 

“From what Jim told me, the rest of the shots fired at y’all were all close calls. You pulled the short stick this time, I guess.”

Hikaru thought for a minute. That was good news, at least, that nobody else was hurt. Hikaru was probably the only one who had been stupid enough to separate from the group, and into a clearing where there was nothing to hide behind. He wondered what had gone down among the others, what had happened for them to realize they were in danger, how long it took before anyone thought to find Hikaru. 

“Are you thirsty?” Leonard asked, pulling him out of his train of thought. 

“God, yes.”

 

-

 

The next person who showed up next to Hikaru’s bed was the Captain. Hikaru had fallen asleep again, after another injection given to him by one of the nurses, and then he woke up and someone brought him a cup of cold water with an aluminum straw, since he couldn’t seem to sit up to drink yet. He managed to get the straw in his mouth and almost sighed in relief at the feeling of the cold water against the dry, irritated surface of his throat. And then he looked to the side and there was Jim sitting in Pavel’s chair. 

He wanted to ask where Pavel was, and why he hadn’t come back yet, but that probably wasn’t the best thing for him to say first, not to such a desperate-looking Jim. 

“Hi,” was what he chose instead. It was difficult to get out around the straw in his mouth.  

“Hey.” Jim smiled cautiously. He was leaning forward with his elbows against his knees, and it was obvious he hadn’t slept, at least not enough. There were dark circles underneath his eyes and his face was pale and Hikaru could guess that he had spent the last days since the beam down wondering how he could have prevented this. 

“How are you feeling?” 

Hikaru finished the water and thought about what he was going to say. To be honest, he couldn’t really feel anything at all, because of all of the painkillers coursing through his bloodstream. He was having a great time drinking water today, though. But that probably wasn’t enough of an answer. 

“I’m okay, I think,” he finally replied.

“Good, that’s good.” 

Hikaru could see Jim’s leg shaking, his foot tapping up and down rapidly. 

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

Jim was clearly trying to focus on Hikaru’s face while they talked and not at the bandages across his body. Finally he just looked down at his hands. 

“There was no way we could have known.” Hikaru added. 

“I know, I know. But I’m sorry this had to happen to you.”

Hikaru snorted. 

“Would you have preferred it happen to someone else?”

Jim glanced back at him, and smirked a little bit, probably amused by the fact that Hikaru could even manage joking about almost dying so soon after the fact, while he was still bedridden. 

“You know what I mean,” Jim said. 

They stayed there in silence. Nurse Chapel came by and offered Hikaru a refill, which he gladly accepted. She balanced the cup on top of his sternum, laughing a little bit as Hikaru ungracefully navigated the cold metal straw between his lips, and Jim laughed too. Hikaru realized he probably looked silly, but he couldn’t sit up yet, so what the hell was he  _ supposed _ to do. 

“I guess if you weren’t the one missing from the group Pavel wouldn’t have hauled ass like he did to find you.” 

“Where is Pavel?” Hikaru asked around the straw in his mouth, ultimately ignoring what Jim had just said but using the opportunity to ask about Pavel. 

“Bones told him he’s not allowed in here until tomorrow. He stayed with you for two straight days without eating or showering so we had to make him go to his quarters and take care of himself for a few hours.”

“Who’s at the helm?”

“The Gamma crew, don’t worry about it. We’ll be docked in the next starbase soon, just to regroup for a few days.”

Hikaru nodded, but he wasn’t thinking about who was at the helm, or where they were going. He thought back to what Jim had said before, that Pavel was with him for two days. He thought only one night had passed since the incident, but apparently he had been drifting in and out of consciousness like that for two days already. He could only imagine how long it must have felt for Pavel, sitting at his bedside the entire time. Now Hikaru would have to wait until the next morning to see him again. He barely knew what time it was, but that still seemed too long to wait. 

Nurse Chapel came back, but this time it was to tell Jim that Spock wanted him on the bridge. He patted his hand against Hikaru’s good shoulder and stood up. 

“I’ll see you soon, alright?”

“You know where to find me,” Hikaru replied. That probably wasn’t what someone is supposed to say when they’re actually, literally bedridden, but it was definitely true. 

“Glad to see you’ve still got your sense of humor.”

Hikaru watched him walk out of sickbay. Christine saw Hikaru looking around, smiled at him from the doorway of her office, and then she was gone too. 

 

-

 

His entire life was just turning into a cycle of sleep and water. It maybe took five or ten minutes after Jim left and Hikaru finished his water before he was dead asleep again. Then when he finally woke up again the lights were down and the privacy screens were up around him. Hikaru didn’t feel thirsty, and nothing was hurting right now, but he moved his hands tentatively and realized that he wasn’t alone this time. He turned his head to the side and Pavel was back. It must have been Pavel’s hand on top of his that had woken him up. 

“You’re here.”

“I’m sorry, they made me leave.”

“Jim said you couldn’t come back until the morning.”

“Technically, yes, but nobody caught me coming in.”

Hikaru breathed out a laugh, and he could sense in Pavel’s voice that he must have had that same little smile on his face like every time he broke the rules. 

Neither of them acknowledged the way their hands were clasped together tightly, even though now there wasn’t really a reason for it. Hikaru wasn’t in pain. Pavel wasn’t scared for him. But Hikaru decided he didn’t want Pavel’s hand to go back into his own lap, so he didn’t bring it up. 

“They let me drink water.”

“Really? How was it?”

“Best experience of my life.”

Pavel laughed, and Hikaru didn’t know how he had never paid attention to the sound of Pavel’s laugh before. It sounded like sunshine. Or starlight. Or something else warm and bright and perfect. Hikaru figured he could come up with a better comparison once his head cleared up. He would have to remind himself to think about it again. Maybe it was a side effect of almost dying, that even the simplest things seemed like a big deal all of a sudden. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in your quarters,” Hikaru asked. He was glad he’d gotten his voice back, but still it was weird not being able to really see Pavel while they talked, the room was too dark. It made him think of when they lived together in the Academy, towards the end, when they would study together all evening and then go to bed and somehow end up talking into the middle of the night. 

“I’d rather be here.”

“You could wheel another bed over.”

“I don’t think Doctor McCoy wants to show up tomorrow to two patients.”

“Suit yourself.”

Pavel’s other hand found Hikaru’s wrist, like one hand holding him wasn’t enough. Hikaru relaxed into the touch, the feeling of Pavel’s warm hands holding his arm, keeping them tethered together.

“You should go back to sleep.”

“I know.” Hikaru mumbled, and he might have been halfway there already. He wanted to ask Pavel how  _ he _ was going to get any sleep, like this, but he must have forgotten to before he slipped away. 

 

-

 

The next morning Hikaru woke up and saw that Pavel had fallen asleep like before, half of his body sitting in the chair and the other half resting over his crossed arms on Hikaru’s bed. Their hands weren’t touching anymore, but Pavel’s forearms were pressed against the line of Hikaru’s leg, and Hikaru’s fingertips could reach his bicep, so it seemed close enough. But it still wasn’t the same. And it wasn’t satisfying that need that Hikaru had deep inside of him for Pavel’s arms to wrap tightly around him, that need which he had tried not to think too hard about yet. 


	19. chapter nineteen: year eight

Hikaru wasn’t able to get out of his biobed until days later, because his core muscles were so damaged and tender that for that first week Hikaru couldn’t even manage to even hold his body upright just to sit up. Once he got used to sitting up, first assisted by the angle of the biobed and then on his own, Leonard finally cleared him to try and walk. Pavel was there to witness his first steps. He had been there to witness a lot more of Hikaru’s recovery than seemed possible, because Hikaru assumed there were shifts he was supposed to be working at the helm and meals he should have been eating and real sleep he should have gotten on his own bed, not hunched over in the chair next to Hikaru’s. But somehow he found a way to be there for as many of Hikaru’s waking hours as he could, and when Hikaru would wake up in the middle of the night, usually Pavel was  _ still _ there next to his biobed. 

He liked the company, of course, especially the company of someone who wasn’t treating him like a patient in ICU (even though technically, that’s what he was). The day he first tried to walk, though, would have been a good time for Pavel to not be there watching him. 

Doctor McCoy had first raised his biobed that morning to have him sitting up for a while, and then when Hikaru’s body didn’t get tired after that he decided it was time for him to try and walk. Hikaru shifted himself around in the bed until his legs were hanging off of the edge, and then after a few seconds of deep breathing he took Leonards arm and worked to pull himself onto his feet.

“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Leonard said, even though Hikaru was visibly shaking. His legs were ultimately unharmed by the incident, but they still hadn’t moved like this for at least an entire week. Hikaru just held onto Leonard’s forearm while his body adjusted. 

He was still just working on standing when Pavel showed up, beaming at Hikaru once he realized that he was seeing him up and out of bed for the first time. 

“Spend too much time in here and Jim’s gonna think you want to switch to medical.” Leonard muttered, passing a tricorder over Hikaru’s body. Pavel scoffed. Once he realized that there wasn’t going to be a lot of action past Hikaru standing up he settled into his chair next to the biobed and just watched the two of them. 

“The Captain would never try to put me in a job outside of command. He’s not an idiot.”

“You’d be surprised,” Leonard said. He brought his attention back to Hikaru. “Take a few steps forward.” 

“Do I have to.”

“Did I make it sound like you had a choice?” Leonard deadpanned, “because that would be my mistake.”

Hikaru knew he could’ve said no if he really wanted to, Dr. McCoy wasn’t actually mean enough to force him to do something that he didn’t feel comfortable with. He wanted to be better, though, to feel like he was finally doing something for his recovery other than lying in bed and letting the medicines put him to sleep. 

Leonard’s arm was there the entire time for him to hold onto, and Hikaru could tell by the way Pavel sat on the edge of his chair that if anything went wrong there would at least be two people coming to his rescue, but he still didn’t know how this was going to turn out. He moved his leg and took his first, tentative, clumsy step forward from the biobed. 

The first few steps after that were totally fine. He hadn’t been hurt so bad that he’d lost his muscle memory or anything, and he was able to build enough momentum to make it halfway across sickbay. The issues didn’t come up until Leonard nodded at him and cautiously lowered his arm to let Hikaru continue on his own. 

His legs were getting stronger and more balanced now that he had been on his feet for a few minutes already, but then the more he moved his body forward the more he started to feel a burn in his chest. It was a side effect of the broken ribs. Even though his bones were being repaired quickly it was still best for them to be kept still, which he’d learned after trying to turn over in his sleep a few nights before and feeling an incredible pain in his chest for almost an hour after. He decided it was time to turn around, that maybe he could make it back to his biobed before the pain got too bad.

“Everything alright?” Leonard asked, and he hadn’t been following Hikaru anymore now that his legs stopped shaking. When Hikaru turned around, though, it must have been clear in his facial expression that things were getting a little bit difficult. Pavel stood up, looking two seconds away from running over to Hikaru.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll make it.”

The movement of his muscles while his weight shifted back and forth felt like they were scraping hard against his ribcage and it only took a few seconds before the pain started to get overwhelming. Hikaru’s vision went blurry around the edges as he took another step. 

“Okay. Alright. You’re good, you can stop.” Leonard closed the distance between them in seconds and placed one arm at Hikaru’s back and the other in front of him for him to keep himself up. It wasn’t enough for Hikaru to lean into, though, and all of a sudden he started to wonder if he really could make it a few meters back to his bed. The pain in his chest only seemed to get worse the more he thought about it. He squeezed his eyes shut. 

“I wanna lie down,” Hikaru panted. He tried to move forward some more and almost collapsed as soon as his weight shifted to just one foot. 

Suddenly there was a second set of hands on him, keeping him upright while he was all but carried back to the biobed. He recognized Pavel’s voice telling him that it was okay, that he was going to be fine, and as soon as he was lowered into the bed Leonard’s hands disappeared for a minute before they returned to shoot a hypospray into his neck.

A few minutes passed of truly unbearable pain, pain that reminded him of that first night when the drugs wore off too soon, and then it started to pass and Hikaru opened his eyes again. 

Pavel was leaning forward in his chair as he watched him, chewed nervously on his lip and twisted his hands together. Hikaru looked to his left and saw Leonard furiously tapping at his PADD. He closed his eyes again, feeling absolutely pathetic, and dropped his head against the pillow. 

“Well,” he swallowed around the lump in his throat, “that went well.”


	20. chapter twenty: year eight

“Did I get a shower when I first came here?”

“Uh...no.” Leonard said from behind his clipboard.

Hikaru could feel himself grimacing a bit. It wasn’t that he smelled bad, or at least he didn’t think he did, but he just really felt like he needed to shower. And the thought that he probably still had dirt on him from more than a week ago...he really  _ wanted  _ to shower. 

“We cleaned your wounds, but the rest of it had to wait until you were all stitched up.”

“ _ Can _ I shower?”

Leonard lowered his clipboard. His eyes were more sympathetic than usual as he looked Hikaru over, assessing the situation. 

“It wouldn’t be good for you to stand up for very long. And it would have to be a water shower. The sonic shower would probably knock you out with all the drugs you’re on.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’d say it’s up to you, but you should know that one of the nurses would have to help you.”

“Oh.” 

Hikaru had been in locker rooms before, and everything like that, but the idea of needing  _ help _ in the shower with someone he hardly knew, someone who would have to watch him struggle to stand upright, catch him if he started to fall over, and most likely  _ clean his body for him _ , he didn’t know if he really needed to shower  _ that _ bad. 

“I could do it,” Pavel spoke up, and it almost sounded like he was only asking permission from the Doctor. Hikaru stared at him. 

“Are you sure?” Leonard asked, and again, Hikaru felt left out of this conversation as if it didn’t concern who would be taking  _ him _ into the shower. 

“It will only be a few minutes. Should be fine.”

Hikaru waited for someone to ask him if he  _ wanted _ Pavel to be the one helping him in the shower, but he thought about it, and his answer wouldn’t have been no. Of course he would have wanted to be able to do it on his own, but if he had to have anyone see him in that position, Pavel was really the least worst option. He looked back to Doctor McCoy and shrugged. 

“I guess I’ll put something over the bandages to stop the water getting in. And then you can knock yourselves out.” Leonard turned to go to the supply closet and then stopped. He pointed his finger at Pavel. 

“But if he slips and falls, it’s on you.”

“Yes, sir.” Pavel said. 

 

-

 

The room for the water shower in sickbay was small, bright, and so clean that it seemed like nobody used it. Floor to ceiling was covered in square white tiles, with a showerhead at the top of one wall and a drain in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t like a typical shower, which took up only the corner of the bathroom, but the entire room was there for the one showerhead. Next to the door was a small shelf with soap and towels, which Pavel was going to have to get for him. Luckily there was a handrail attached to the wall below the shower for Hikaru to keep himself up. Pavel led him there with one hand on his arm and one on his back, walking patiently in line with Hikaru’s slow, shaky steps. 

Once Hikaru was latched onto the rail Pavel started to undress him quickly and methodically. If it were Hikaru in that position he probably would have tried to make a joke, one intended to break the tension which would only inevitably point out how awkward the situation was. But Pavel didn’t say anything as he pulled at the thin, linen pants they sometimes gave to long term sickbay patients, and then Hikaru was naked in front of him. He lifted one foot at a time for him to take them off completely. Pavel dropped them into a pile underneath the shelf of towels, and Hikaru watched him take his own uniform shirt off over his head. He took his pants off, next, but that was as far as he undressed himself, keeping on his undershirt and the black regulation boxer briefs. He came back to the shower with a small washcloth and the bottle of all purpose soap. 

“The water shouldn’t be too hot, I don’t think,” he mumbled, before setting the dial to a lukewarm temperature and turning on the water. Hikaru just watched him, almost in awe that Pavel had been willing to do this for him at all. But, then again, after seeing your friend almost die, seeing them in the shower really couldn’t be a big deal, Hikaru guessed. 

Even though it wasn’t very warm, it still felt amazing to be under the shower. Hikaru couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a water shower, probably he hadn’t been in one since his last shore leave. 

“You have to tell me if you don’t think you can keep standing.”

“Okay.”

Pavel nodded and went to work right away. He wet the washcloth under the water and then poured soap into it, and checked Hikaru’s facial expression another time, just to make sure he was still doing okay. Hikaru would have given him a thumbs up, if he wasn’t holding onto the rail with both hands. Pavel started with his arms, first, scrubbing the skin from shoulder to wrist. He washed Hikaru’s neck, the uncovered parts of his back and chest, his stomach. Hikaru held his breath as Pavel bent over to wash his legs, his lower back and abdomen, and then he felt silly. It wasn’t like Pavel didn’t know what he was going to find when he took Hikaru’s clothes off, and Pavel seemed completely unfazed. 

Eventually the tactile feeling of the cloth and the soap against his skin started to relax him, made him forget how much effort it took to stand up for so long. 

“Do you want me to wash your hair?” Pavel asked after he’d finished Hikaru’s feet and ankles. He stood back up, and he was already getting wet from the shower, water dripping down his face from the tips of his hair, soaking his shirt. Hikaru didn’t know why he hadn’t felt like he could undress all the way and decided to stay partly clothed instead. Maybe it was for Hikaru’s own sake. 

“Yeah, okay.”

Pavel hung the washcloth over his shoulder so he could wash Hikaru’s hair with both hands. He was tall enough now that Hikaru barely had to lean his head back. He just stayed clinging onto the rail while the soapy water slid down his neck. He spluttered a little bit when some of it got in his nose and mouth. 

“Sorry,” Pavel said, and gently tried to guide him to the side so his face was out from under the water. He walked back in front of Hikaru, took the washcloth again and softly washed his face with it. Hikaru wanted to close his eyes, to relax into the feeling of being cleaned like this, being cared for in a way he hadn’t imagined before. But the expression on Pavel’s face was strange. He looked focused, as he efficiently scrubbed Hikaru from head to toe, but there was something else there. Maybe caution, or fear, like he was still worried for Hikaru even though he was clearly getting better. 

“Is it hard to see me like this,” Hikaru asked, because it was a better idea than asking if it was hard to see him half dead on the ground, even though he wondered about that, too. 

“Yes,” Pavel answered plainly. He brushed off the sides of Hikaru’s nose, and then underneath his jaw, and then his ears. 

“You have so much dirt on your ears, still.”

“Hopefully they’ll change my sheets.”

“I think they will.”

Pavel turned off the water and quickly went to get a dry towel before Hikaru got too cold. He followed the same path he’d used to clean, this time to dry Hikaru’s skin. He fluffed Hikaru’s hair with the towel, for a little bit longer than was necessary, and they both laughed. 

“Are you still okay, standing?” Pavel asked, and lifted the towel off of Hikaru’s head. 

“Yeah, it’s not too bad.”

“They said they’ll bring new clothes for you outside, so I will go check.”

Before he walked away this time, Pavel wrapped the towel around Hikaru’s waist, in case there was someone outside of the door, and Hikaru didn’t know it was possible to appreciate Pavel any more than he already did. 


	21. chapter twenty one: year eight

Hikaru was having nightmares. Leonard had told him it was likely, what with the trauma of his near-death experience and the way his sleep was going to change because of the medications he was having to take. So it wasn’t a surprise, but it was still inconvenient. 

He’d finally recovered enough to stop sleeping 20 hours a day in sickbay and was discharged to his own quarters with a new recommended schedule of eating, sleeping, and physical therapy. Sleeping in his own bed again was amazing at first. Being able to stretch out, not having to sleep on his back, no sounds of machines and doctors and patients coming in and out. He laid down in his bed in complete darkness and silence and was ready to have the best sleep of his life. 

And then he woke up a few hours later drenched in sweat, every memory of what happened on Ceron VI flashing through his mind in exaggerated horror. He forced himself upright and took big heaving breaths. 

“Lights, thirty percent,” Hikaru choked out, and once the lights were on, he was able to start to pull himself out of the terrified state his dream had left him in. He looked down at his hands, gripping so tightly at the sheets that his knuckles were white, and focused on relaxing them. He looked at the clock. 0400. It was close enough to the morning that he didn’t try to go back to sleep. Instead he took a shower and changed into his uniform before going back to sickbay to see if there wasn’t anything he could do to never have a nightmare like that again. 

 

-

 

Christine Chapel was still on shift when he made it down there. She told him to try meditating before bed, to take his muscle relaxers earlier in the day so he didn’t sleep too deeply, to talk to one of the ship’s counselors about what he saw so the images wouldn’t be so powerful. She recommended certain foods to eat before sleeping, alternative sleep schedules to avoid longer periods of REM sleep, or to try sharing a room for a little while. 

“Why would that help,” Hikaru asked, rubbing his eyes.

“It might make you feel safer to have someone else in the room with you. Your body can sense it even when you’re sleeping.”

She checked his vitals before he left, and at least physically he seemed to be doing fine. 

 

-

 

He tried the part about taking his muscle relaxers earlier, and meditated, and drank  _ chamomile tea _ , but none of it worked. Hikaru’s mind gave him the same nightmare as the night before, but since his muscle relaxers were wearing off he woke up both terrified and in pain, and ended up on his bathroom floor puking his guts out into the toilet. 

 

-

 

It didn’t stop. In fact, it started to get worse. Every nightmare had more blood, more pain, more fire than the last. Always it was a reimagining of what had happened, but some aspects of it would be even worse than the reality. In one of them there was no communicator on the ground in front of him, and then there was nobody who came to rescue him. In another Pavel was there, on the ground next to him, and nobody beamed them up. Hikaru thought about reaching out to one of the ship’s counselors about it, but he could barely handle thinking about his dreams after they happened, let alone talking about them. 

Instead he just tried to spend less time sleeping. He slept with the lights on, to keep himself from sleeping deep enough to dream. He set alarms to wake him up after two or three hours, unless one of his nightmares beat him to it. 

If anyone caught on to Hikaru seemingly getting worse as he was getting better, Pavel was the only one who brought it up. 

“Have you been sleeping?” He asked over dinner one evening. After his shift at the helm he’d met Hikaru on his way out of one of his physical therapy sessions. It was uncanny how Pavel seemed to find him no matter where he went or how his schedule changed. 

Hikaru wasn’t even hungry, not after the images that were in his mind all day from the night before. But it was no use arguing with Pavel over it. He tried his best to finish an entire serving of pasta while Pavel put away enough food for two people. 

“No,” Hikaru answered honestly.

“Is it the nightmares?”

Hikaru nodded. He had told Pavel after the first one, back when he thought he was going to be able to fix it. He hadn’t wanted to admit that nothing had worked. After a few minutes of silence and trying to eat and trying to decide if it was a good idea or a bad idea, Hikaru finally asked,

“Would you do me a favor?”

Pavel tilted his head to the side. 

“Of course.”

He tried to explain as nonchalantly as he could, as if it didn’t matter at all even though it clearly, obviously mattered a lot, that Christine had suggested he try sleeping with someone else in the room, and that Hikaru was wondering if Pavel was willing to be that someone else. 

“That’s it?”

“Well, yeah. If you’d be okay with it.”

“I’m a little insulted that this is the last thing you’re trying.”

Hikaru looked down at the table, at his unfinished food, and then back at Pavel and his earnest, kind, compassionate face.  _ Of course _ Pavel would do this for him. Of course he didn’t mind. 

“I just don’t want to ask too much of you.”

“Hikaru. I went in the shower with you,” Pavel deadpanned, “I think I can handle sharing a room.”

Well. That was a good point.

 

-

 

Hikaru woke up again, sweaty and too warm and unable to catch his breath, but before he could turn on the lights or force himself out of bed or even sit up, there was a hand on his shoulder, and he remembered that Pavel was in his quarters tonight. He was supposed to be sleeping on the couch, but Hikaru must have made enough noise in his sleep to wake him up. Now Pavel was sitting on the edge of the bed next to Hikaru, pressing his hand firmly against the curve of Hikaru’s shoulder, reminding him where he was. Without thinking Hikaru reached for that hand to hold it in his own, over his pounding chest, and Pavel let him. And he fell back asleep. 


	22. chapter twenty two: year eight

Without having to ask him to, Pavel spent every night in Hikaru’s quarters after that. Sometimes Hikaru didn’t have nightmares, and he wondered if his body really could feel the presence of someone else in the room. When he did, he always woke up to Pavel sitting on his bed, touching his shoulder or his arm or his hand, reminding him where he was. Usually by the morning Pavel would be back on the couch or already up and getting ready for his shift. They didn’t talk about what happened when Hikaru woke up in the middle of the night. 

Until Hikaru had another nightmare, and he woke up, and Pavel wasn’t there. He sat up in bed, felt all around him, only to find nothing. 

“Lights, thirty percent.”

The lights turned on and he realized that Pavel  _ was _ there, asleep on the couch across the room. Pavel shifted and squinted and blinked and woke up, and then he met eyes with Hikaru and nearly jumped. 

“I’m sorry.” Hikaru said, breathing short and heavy. “I forgot you were there.”

“No, no. I should have been awake. I guess I slept too deep.”

Hikaru wiped the sweat from his forehead. He wished Pavel wasn’t seeing him like this, right now. It was bad enough that he was spending so much time at his bedside when he was waking up in the night, but now he could see what he looked like at times like this, when he was pale and sweaty and shaking. 

He pushed himself out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom, hoping that by the time he had showered and stopped shaking so much Pavel would’ve fallen asleep again. But when he came back out Pavel was still awake, and the lights were still on, and instead of laying on the couch now Pavel was sitting on his bed. 

“You don’t have to,” Hikaru said. 

“I want to.” 

He could hear it in Pavel’s voice that there was no space to argue. Hikaru put a clean t shirt on over his boxers and walked back to his bed. He was about to lie back down, but something just felt awkward about intending to go to sleep with Pavel sitting in his bed already. 

“Isn’t this kind of weird.”

“If it works, why does it matter if it’s weird?”

“But you sitting up and me getting to lie down and sleep...it doesn’t seem fair.”

“Should I lie down?”

Hikaru thought for a second, stood next to his bed and felt awkward. Finally he forced himself to make a decision. 

“Okay. Lie down.”

Pavel cautiously laid down in Hikaru’s bed, and Hikaru climbed in on the side next to the wall. He called off the lights and they shifted around to try and get comfortable. There wasn’t a lot of space in the bed for two people, but it was big enough at least that they wouldn’t have to be touching each other the whole night. 

“Is this enough,” Pavel asked, quieter now that they were in the dark. Hikaru understood the question behind it, _ is this enough _ , meaning,  _ should I hold your hand as well _ . He really didn’t know. His chest tightened and he remembered that feeling he kept getting in sickbay, that need he had for Pavel’s touch. 

“I don’t know.” 

“You have to tell me.”

“I don’t know why it helps, it just does.” Hikaru crossed his arms over his chest. Pavel turned to the side and slid one of his hands to rest over Hikaru’s forearm. 

“What do you see in your nightmares,” he asked.

“The same thing over and over again. But it’s always worse, somehow, than it really was. I don’t know how my brain comes up with it.”

Pavel’s hand tightened around Hikaru’s wrist. Hikaru just laid there and tried to slow his breathing, to let this be okay, that he was asking Pavel to be here. He had to remind himself that Pavel  _ wanted _ to be here for him. 

“I have nightmares about it, too,” Pavel finally whispered.

Hikaru didn’t know what to say. It didn’t matter, because Pavel kept talking. 

“I didn’t think it would hurt so much, to believe that you might die. But it was like I felt it in my entire body. And then I felt bad, because I couldn’t even imagine the real pain that you were going through in sickbay.”

“I’m sure your pain was real, too.”

“But it couldn’t have killed me.”

“I guess not.”

Hikaru uncrossed his arms, placed one of his hands over Pavel’s. He thought about what Pavel had said,  _ if it works, why does it matter if it’s weird? _ and decided that he needed to just let himself have this, and worry later about what it might mean. His entire life had turned upside down ever since he’d woken up for the first time in sickbay a month ago. If holding Pavel’s hand while they slept was what would keep him from losing his mind, he needed to just let that be what worked. And maybe Pavel was thinking about how strange it was, too, but  _ he _ had just watched his best friend almost die. He was entitled to healing as much as Hikaru was. 

 

-

 

The next night after that, Pavel and Hikaru crawled into bed next to each other, and Hikaru slept through the whole night without waking up once, without dreaming, and without any second thoughts when he woke up with Pavel’s head against his shoulder. 


	23. chapter twenty three: year eight

Hikaru stared at himself in the mirror. Maybe it was just his own self-image and worldview that had changed when he almost died, but he just felt like he looked different. Or maybe it was because now he would actually spend time in front of the mirror thinking about how he looked, which he didn’t really do before.

In reality, there was only one thing about his physical appearance that had changed. His bones healed in the first month, and his muscles readjusted around them, but the skin surrounding the points of impact, he knew, was never going to be the same again. They had spent hours and hours in sickbay, trying to regenerate the skin of his chest and shoulder, but the final results still fell short of what Doctor McCoy was hoping for. Instead of simple white incision scars that would eventually fade, Hikaru was left with huge patches of scar tissue on his skin, reddish-brown starbursts that spread across his body with jagged, ugly edges. Now that they’d taken the bandages off he had to cover them with lotion every day, to alleviate the tight, uncomfortable feeling of missing such a significant amount of his normal skin. 

So he was leaning over the bathroom counter after showering, and staring at himself, which was apparently becoming a habit. He couldn’t remember a time in his life where he spent so much time thinking about how he looked. His face, in theory, was still the same. If anything it was more normal than it had been a month ago. His hair was cut short again, the color was back in his face, the dark circles under his eyes had faded from enough nights of real sleep. He’d been off of his meds for a week now, already, and back at work. So he should have been feeling like himself again. His eyes scanned his reflection until they found the dark, misshapen scar across his chest and torso. Hikaru sighed quietly and reached for the replicated cocoa butter Christine had given him. He covered the discolored skin with it, unfazed at this point by the rough texture, and then he reached back to get the smaller scar on his shoulder blade. 

Pavel was still sleeping when Hikaru walked out to get dressed. He’d finished the belt of his uniform pants when he saw Pavel moving in bed out of the corner of his eye. He was all but living in his quarters, now. Almost all of his clothes were here, and his toothbrush, and his books and his video game console. They probably should have looked into just relocating completely into a double room, but at this point they had adjusted. It would have been an afterthought. Plus, if they were still sleeping in the same bed, a double room didn’t offer them much except for a second sink in the bathroom. 

Hikaru watched as Pavel turned over in bed, half asleep, and then reached around on the bedside table for the clock. He groaned from under the blankets. 

“It’s not that late,” Hikaru said. He was pretty sure it wasn’t even 0700 yet. Pavel sat up, pushing his hair back from his forehead. His eyelids were still heavy and his left cheek was red from where it had pressed against the pillow.  

“I wanted to work out this morning.”

“You didn’t set an alarm.”

“You were supposed to be my alarm.You’re getting too quiet.” Pavel pushed the blankets off of his lap so he could swing his legs over the side of the bed, and then it looked like he needed to take a break after that. He looked back at Hikaru, and Hikaru saw his eyes pass over his bare chest and immediately dart away. 

“It’s not that bad, is it,” he asked, reaching in his dresser for an undershirt anyway. 

“It looks like it hurts.” This time Pavel let himself look again before focusing on Hikaru’s face instead. Hikaru pulled the shirt over his head. 

“It doesn’t anymore, it’s just...I can feel that it’s different.”

“Hmm.”

Pavel pushed off from the bed and went into the bathroom. Before Hikaru finished getting dressed he made the bed, and then he already felt tired after just forty five minutes of being awake, and flopped face first onto the covers. They still hadn’t really brought up the whole bed sharing thing, and it was starting to stress Hikaru out. He didn’t want to risk sleeping on his own again, and he liked Pavel’s company before bed and first thing in the morning. On top of that, he was sure that as soon as he brought up the fact that Pavel was still sleeping in his bed, even after more than two weeks had passed nightmare-free already, the logical conclusion would be that it was time for Pavel to go back to his own quarters. That was the thought that stressed him out the most, that this part of his recovery process was inevitably going to end. It was funny, especially when he remembered how many times, in the Academy, he had wished for a single room just to have some peace and quiet. Now it was the quiet that made him uneasy. He didn’t want to have to go back to his quarters without Pavel there, playing video games or complaining to Hikaru about work or snoring in his sleep. 

Hikaru was about to fall asleep again when the sound of the bathroom door opening and closing startled him awake. 

“Calling in sick today?”

“I wish.”

“You could get away with it, you know.”

“I’m fine,” Hikaru muttered into the blankets. He felt something fly by and barely hit his head and propped himself up on his elbows to see it was his uniform shirt. 

“Thanks.”

“If you’re not calling in then you need to get moving because I’m hungry.”

“I’m up. I’m going.”

Hikaru pulled the shirt on and rolled off the bed to find his shoes. When Pavel first started sleeping at his quarters, Hikaru had suggested they try not to be so obvious about it, because rumors would start spreading through the ship sooner rather than later, but now they didn’t even bother. They made their way to the mess in step with one another. 

 

-

 

Going back to work had actually turned out to be a lot easier than Hikaru had expected. He was dreading the likelihood that everyone would be walking on eggshells around him, that he would be getting worried glances every few seconds from all stations on the bridge. He just wanted things to go back to some sort of normal, which can be difficult when you were the only one who almost died on an alien planet, and then the only patient bedridden in sickbay for nearly two weeks. Hikaru was tired of all of the concern and attention that surrounded him like a layer of bubble wrap. 

Thankfully, his first shift back on the bridge was the first seemingly normal day he’d had since before the accident. Other than being met with applause from the rest of the bridge crew as soon as he walked in, which he could tell from the proud sparkle in Jim’s eye (and the mischievous one in Pavel’s--after he had held up Hikaru in the hallway and made them ten minutes late to their shift) that his entrance had been meticulously planned. But after that, he sat down at the helm, and everything was business as usual. 

For the first time so far in his five year mission, Hikaru was grateful to be piloting the standard Jim-Kirk-fucked-up patrol mission that they had been assigned to. Every day was just about staying on course, charting planet and starbase locations against the existing Starfleet files, and watching out for surprise obstacles. Hikaru let himself become absorbed in the busywork. He was just so glad to be doing  _ something _ , glad that his brain wasn’t clouded by painkillers anymore. He could tell that everyone else was pretty bored, though. 

Jim had taken to pacing back and forth, and Spock, in response, had taken to nagging Jim about it in his own way, reminding the Captain that he needed to be paying attention, that ignoring his post was irresponsible. Jim just ignored him and kept pacing, occasionally stopping by someone else’s post to see what was going on. 

“How long until Spock loses it and says ‘fuck’, do you think,” Pavel whispered from across the helm, just loud enough that only Hikaru could hear. 

“I could bring us a little too close to that floating piece of rock over there and see if Spock panics,” Hikaru whispered back. He could see Pavel in the corner of his eye, looking down at his map and acting natural and trying not to smile.

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Could you make Spock panic enough to curse, though?”

“I’m not that talented.”

Hikaru thought about it for a few minutes. 

“How about I wait until Jim is passing in front of his chair again and tip the ship backwards to try and get him to fall into it.”

Pavel snorted at that one, apparently unable to hold it back with the image in his mind of Jim being hurled backwards into his chair. That probably wouldn’t accomplish Pavel’s idea of Spock saying “fuck”, either, but they were already busted before Hikaru could test it.

“Something funny over there, Ensign?”

“Nothing Captain,” Pavel cleared his throat, straightening up in his chair a little bit. He and Hikaru shared a look across the helm, once Jim was distracted again, and Pavel mouthed  _ next time _ . 

Even after Pavel turned back to his own station, evidently trying to keep himself occupied, Hikaru realized he was still watching him. Seeing Pavel’s profile while he worked like this, the straight line of his nose, the points of his cheekbones and the small curve of his forehead, going upwards into the curly hair at the top of his head, Hikaru felt like he was learning something new. But he already knew what Pavel looked like, didn’t he? He knew the length of his eyelashes and the size of his ears and the way his hair went from light brown curls on top to the short dark hair on the sides of his head. Hikaru knew the angle of his chin and his adam’s apple and the width of his shoulders. It was like he looked at Pavel now, though, and he was seeing, really seeing these things for the first time. 

He must have really been bored with this patrol, after all. Hikaru looked away before Pavel could notice he was staring at him, took a deep breath, and tried to bring his focus back to floating rocks. It was difficult, for some reason, because there was some voice in his brain that kept telling him to look at Pavel again. He really, really tried just to think about the floating rocks. 


	24. chapter twenty four: year eight

“You better have a damn good excuse for not calling in two months.” Yuki’s glare was still just as powerful through a screen. “I’m pregnant, and I’m running out of people I get to complain to, and now because of you I had one less person to complain to for two  _ whole _ months. And three days.”

“You’ve been counting?”

“I’m serious. Something big happened that you aren’t telling me about because you never tell people about big things.”

“I like the new haircut, by the way.”

“I mean it, Hikaru.”

Hikaru sighed and rested his chin on his hands, looking down at the surface of his desk for a moment. It hadn’t exactly become easier to talk about what had happened, but at least everyone on the ship knew about it without Hikaru having to be the one to tell them. So most of those conversations were about how Hikaru was recovering, not the actual event that he had to recover from. He looked back up at the screen of his PADD propped up against the wall. Yuki was still glaring. 

“Okay, uh. I kind of...almost died.”

“You  _ what. _ ”

“Yeah.” He was about to try and laugh it off but realized that would probably make it worse, and just ended up clearing his throat unnaturally. Yuki blinked at him, clearly just taking in the fact Hikaru dying was even a possibility. 

“What the fuck.”

“Yeah...” They stared at each other for a minute, Yuki’s face half shocked and half in disbelief, and Hikaru added, “Don’t tell mom.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Don’t tell mom.”

“Obviously. Now tell me what happened.”

“So we beamed down to this planet that Starfleet said was uninhabited. We were just supposed to fill out a status report and take some plant and mineral samples. And then we get there and I got separated from the group taking plant samples--”

“Typical.”

“But it turned out we weren’t alone.”

“So you got your shit rocked by a bunch of aliens.”

“Basically.”

She went silent for a minute. The two of them were bad at talking about serious things (a trait that somehow only they got, because Aiko was good at everything) and  _ almost dying _ definitely qualified as a serious thing. 

“You know, technically,  _ we _ were the aliens,” Pavel called out from the bathroom. Hikaru was trying to think of a good comeback to that when Yuki perked up, excitedly asking, 

“Is that Pavel?” 

“I...yes,” Hikaru said, to both of them, kind of. Pavel had left the bathroom door open while he shaved his face, but Yuki couldn’t see him from her position on the desk. And Hikaru hadn’t bothered to go somewhere more private before calling her, because there probably wasn’t anything he could say to his sister that Pavel didn’t already know, anyway. He just didn’t expect Pavel to take so long to make his presence known. Pavel had been silent for long enough that Hikaru had kind of forgotten he could hear everything. 

“Tell him to come over here.”

Hikaru leaned back in his chair until he could see Pavel’s reflection in the mirror, face still halfway covered in shaving cream. 

“He’s shaving,” Hikaru said, realizing too late that there were certain implications that came with Pavel shaving in  _ Hikaru’s _ bathroom and not in his own. 

“Aw, did you guys have a sleepover?” 

“Yes we did,” Pavel called from the bathroom. Hikaru already knew that if Pavel didn’t finish shaving soon he was going to be caught in between these two people shouting at each other from opposite sides of his quarters.

“Adorable.”

Hikaru pressed his mouth into a flat line. He hoped that since Yuki was joking, she would assume Pavel was joking, and that if he was lucky enough, they wouldn’t talk about it anymore.

“I’m glad you’re okay.” Yuki finally said.

“Me too.” 

“So you were out for two months?”

“Not exactly.”

“Why didn’t you call me, then,” Yuki deadpanned. 

“First I was in sickbay for a month and then I was on so many painkillers I wouldn’t have been very good company.”

“I don’t care about your company, I told you, I want to complain.”

“So are you going to complain, or what. I’m here now.”

“God where do I even fucking start,” Yuki took a deep breath. Since this was just a video call, the screen only big enough to show their faces, she looked the same as she always did, except now she had short, chin-length hair. But if Hikaru had remembered it right she was supposed to be six or seven months pregnant by this point. She proceeded to list, in great detail, all of the worst things about being six or seven months pregnant. 

When Pavel finished shaving he came over to be another audience member to her bitch session. Hikaru only had one chair and Pavel stood behind him, resting one hand on the desk in front of Hikaru so he could lean over low enough to be in the video call. He smelled like soap and aftershave, and he was just close enough that his breath ghosted across the part of Hikaru’s neck not covered by his undershirt. The longer he stood like that, trapping Hikaru between his body and the desk, the harder it was for Hikaru to actually listen to his sister. He thought back to that awkward realization he’d had after “ _ he’s shaving” _ , about the implications of the way they acted these days, about their living together in Hikaru’s room. Pavel stayed there like that the entire time, talked to Yuki casually from over Hikaru’s shoulder, as if this position was somehow normal for them. 

Hikaru decided, though, that night when they went to sleep next to each other in his bed, that he really should stop letting things like Pavel invading his personal space take him by surprise. 

 

-

 

The problem was that Hikaru needed to talk to someone about the confusing thoughts and feelings that kept coming up around Pavel in the last two months, but he couldn’t think of anyone in his life who he felt comfortable talking about that type of thing with. Nobody except for Pavel, that is. There was an obvious conflict there. The only person he had kind of been able to talk about his feelings with was Nurse Chapel, who had been checking in with him since his first nightmare. 

Hikaru had found her in her office at the end of the day, leaned back in her chair with a half empty beer bottle and planning out the next few schedules for the nursing staff on a big calendar that filled the screen of her desk. She had wordlessly motioned for him to have a seat and Hikaru waited for her usual suggestion that he start going to a real counselor already:

“You know, I’m not really a counselor. There are better people you could talk to.”

“It’s not about the nightmares.” Hikaru sat down in the chair across from her. “I haven’t had any for more than two weeks.”

“Oh really, that’s good.”

“I guess I just have a question.”

Christine watched him carefully as she took another sip of beer. She looked like she could’ve been a few seconds away from toeing her boots off and propping her feet up on the desk, if Hikaru hadn’t come in. Instead she was still partly trying to be professional. She tucked a piece of stray hair behind her ear and sat up straighter, laced her fingers together over her desk. 

“What’s going on?”

“Well, I don’t really know, but,” Hikaru resisted the urge to break eye contact and look down in his lap, “I’m just wondering if it’s normal, after a traumatic experience like the one I had, for your feelings to change about people.”

She nodded, and thankfully didn’t ask anything about who Hikaru could have been referring to. 

“In what way do you mean?”

“Like, to feel like all of a sudden you need to be around someone all the time. And...stuff like that,” Hikaru trailed off.  

It was more than that, really. Ever since he woke up in sickbay without Pavel next to him he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling, the need he had, for Pavel to be around. And when they were apart, sometimes it was all he could think about. It just seemed silly, and weak, and selfish, Hikaru thought. Pavel already had done so much for him and he just wanted more all the time. 

Christine watched him again, like she might have been diagnosing him. 

“I think it’s pretty common for a near death experience to show us how we really feel about the people in our lives.”

Hikaru wanted to ask if what she meant was how you  _ really _ feel about someone, as in how you felt about them before it happened. He wondered if it couldn’t just be the fear of death that had forced him to become attached to the nearest person, like the first person he saw when he woke up alive again. He didn’t know how he could word that without giving away more information than he wanted, so he just sat there and looked at the floor while he came up with what to say next. 

“If you’re worried that the new feelings are fake, somehow, just because you almost died, I don’t think that’s likely.”

“It just seems like things are happening too fast, sometimes, for it to be real,” Hikaru mumbled. 

“Life can happen like that, you know. Too fast. Or too slow. Especially on this damn ship.”

Christine paused for a second. 

“God, I really sounded like McCoy just then, didn’t I.”

The next silent pause between them started to get awkward. Hikaru wondered if he should leave. 

“So what are you worried about that you don’t think you can talk to whoever this person is?” Christine finally asked, before correcting herself, “That is, if this theoretical person exists.”

Hikaru looked up at her and she shrugged her shoulders a little bit. To be honest, he didn’t really know the answer to that. Other than the obvious fact that maybe telling Pavel that he was starting to feel different, more strongly about him in some ways, would be  _ awkward _ , there wasn’t really a better reason why Hikaru was afraid to do it. 

“I guess I just…” Hikaru thought for a second, “I just don’t know what would happen to our relationship if I told them what’s going on. I mean,  _ I _ don’t even really know what’s going on. But I don’t know how they would respond, anyway.”

But Hikaru knew how he, himself, would respond, if the roles were reversed. Or at least, he knew how he did four years ago, when something like this happened. That thought, the memory attached to it, seemed to hit him at a thousand miles an hour. His heart dropped into his stomach when he started to consider that this might be the same thing all over again. 

Not because developing feelings for Pavel would be such a bad thing. If that was what was going on with him, it would actually make a lot of sense. Hikaru wasn’t afraid because he might be feeling something for Pavel, though. He was afraid to remember the time that Pavel felt something for him, something which he didn’t feel in return. 

Simply put, Hikaru had completely broken Pavel’s heart four years ago. Pavel did his best acting like he was fine, but Hikaru could tell. Even after they started their mission on the Enterprise and Pavel put some distance between the two of them, essentially avoided him whenever possible, Hikaru saw the way Pavel’s shoulders stiffened around him, saw the way Pavel glanced at him sometimes. He heard the change in his voice when they talked for the first few months of that year. Witnessing how Pavel had closed off from him, built a wall around his own feelings, it took a toll on Hikaru. It tore him up inside to know that he had hurt the single person he cared most about on the ship. Before they were friends again, it hurt, too, to believe that maybe things had changed between them for good. 

But Hikaru and Pavel’s friendship had survived, and then they just didn’t talk about it. 

So the thought that Hikaru could be developing feelings for his best friend, that wasn’t so hard for him to handle. Hikaru felt sick though, imagining that, after what he put Pavel through four years ago, what they had finally recovered from, he could even dare to tell Pavel that suddenly he felt something. Or to go so far as to ask that Pavel feel something for him, again. Hikaru couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t. 

“What’s up?”

“Huh?”

“It looks like something just came up in your head.”

“Oh. No. I’m just--” Hikaru stood up a little too fast from his chair, and Christine’s eyes widened a little bit. 

“I think I’m just tired.”

She clearly didn’t buy it, but she nodded again anyway. 

“Do you need anything to help you sleep?”

“No thanks. I should be fine, I think.”

Christine smiled at him, nodded again, and reached for her beer as he made his way out. He didn’t need any sleeping pills, really. He had actually been sleeping pretty well since he stopped taking all of those meds, and especially since Pavel had finally learned not to  _ kick him in his sleep _ all the damn time like he kept doing in the beginning. 

_ Oh fuck _ , Hikaru remembered,  _ Pavel _ . 


	25. chapter twenty five: year eight

Aiko’s face showed up on the screen and Hikaru knew right away that he was in trouble. And that was on top of her calling him with no warning, when usually she liked to message and ask if he was busy first. Instead the call came in while Hikaru was changing out of his uniform after work and he scrambled to get a shirt on before it rang out. He knew it wasn’t going to be good. 

“Why didn’t you tell me that you almost died?” She asked before Hikaru could even say hi. She was still wearing the charcoal gray uniform for Academy staff with her hair pulled back neatly, and Hikaru recognized the wall of one of her lecture halls behind her. 

“Yuki wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“She told me that you only told her not to tell mom about it. Which she hasn’t yet.”

“ _ Yet? _ ”

“You guys really should make a group chat,” Pavel said.

“Oh, is Pavel there?”

Hikaru rolled his eyes and stood up from the desk with his PADD. Apparently even in the middle of serious conversations his sisters couldn’t stay focused on him once they knew Pavel was in the room. He walked across his quarters and switched cameras so Aiko could see Pavel spread out on the couch. 

“Sit down so I can talk to both of you.”

Without needing confirmation from Hikaru Pavel sat up and made room for him on the couch. 

“This conversation was supposed to be about  _ me, _ ” Hikaru said as he sat down next to Pavel. They had to scoot closer so they were both in the video. 

“Don’t act like you were so excited to talk after I found out about your secret.”

“Is it a secret?” Pavel asked, looking at Hikaru. 

“Yes. Of course it’s a secret.”

“What happened,” Aiko cut in, and the two of them looked back to the screen. 

“What did Yuki tell you?”

“She told me everything you told her, which was almost nothing. I don’t understand how you two can communicate like that.”

“What more do you need to know? Did you call me so you could get a play-by-play of the worst day of my life?” Hikaru was trying to sound snarky but it came out a little too serious. Aiko’s face went from slightly pissed off now to sympathetic. 

“Okay that sounded more dramatic than it was in my head,” Hikaru said. It didn’t seem to fix anything. Hidden from their video call, Pavel’s hand moved to rest on Hikaru’s thigh. He glanced over at Pavel, but he hadn’t moved away from focusing on Aiko. 

“We still don’t really know what happened on Ceron VI,” Pavel started, “nobody saw the life forms that attacked us. We don’t even know what their weapons were, or anything.”

“There was no record at all of life on that planet?”

“Nope,” Hikaru said.

“That’s crazy. They’re going to have to send someone back there.”

“Well it better not be me.” Hikaru didn’t want to think about how the story of his away team on Ceron VI was going to have to get passed around until someone else’s crew went down there to attempt diplomacy. He didn’t want to know how long it would take for his reputation to recover once he became known as  _ that guy who almost died because he broke off to expand his plant collection _ . 

“Once Hikaru was on the ship our Captain had us retreat to a completely different star system,” Pavel added, and Hikaru didn’t even know that they’d done that. Leaving the planet’s orbit would have been enough, in his opinion. 

“And what happened to you before they beamed you up?”

Pavel’s hand tightened just barely against Hikaru’s thigh and Hikaru wondered if he hadn’t put his hand there for Hikaru’s comfort in talking about this, but his own. They did things like this a lot, still, acts of physical comfort, but it was starting to become unclear lately who was comforting whom anymore. 

“I got hit with some sort of energy beam, I think three or four times.”

“You think?”

“After the first shot I wasn’t really paying attention, but where I was hit in the chest I think it was much worse than the other spot on my shoulder.”

Aiko cringed. 

“Do I want to know the details anymore.”

“Maybe not.”

“Well the scars are gross looking, that’s all you need to know.”

“They’re not that bad,” Pavel argued, and the two of them shared a look, and then by the time Hikaru looked back at Aiko there was something else entirely in her facial expression. Hikaru didn’t want to admit to himself that he knew what it was. Yuki had been distracted enough that she missed the opportunity to really analyze the situation of Pavel  _ shaving _ in his quarters, but Aiko was clearly paying a lot more attention. 

Instead of asking the obvious question of  _ so you’ve seen them? _ She just watched the two of them for a second, eyes going back and forth between their faces. Their faces which were very close together. And then she seemingly catalogued the information away in her brain and continued her interrogation. 

“How did you get out of there?”

Hikaru was about to answer with his version of the story, which was just simply that Pavel found him and they were beamed up, but he wasn’t expecting Pavel to take over from there. He realized, then, that he had never actually asked about Pavel’s version. 

“Once we realized we were under attack, everyone tried to find a safe point to beam up. And I saw that Hikaru wasn’t with us so the Captain and I stayed on the surface to find him while the others went back to the ship.”

Pavel’s voice was calm, almost casual, but Hikaru could see how his posture was becoming stiff, like he was actively holding himself still.

“We tried to communicate with him but he didn’t respond, so we split up to search for him. And then when I found him he was on the ground pretending that he was dead.”

“You  _ what. _ ”

“I don’t want to talk about that part,” Hikaru said. 

“You  _ actually _ tried that?”

“That was apparently his instinctual response,” Pavel confirmed, and Hikaru wanted to give him a dirty look for including that part of the story but he felt like he had shared enough private looks with Pavel for one phone call. 

“That’s unbelievable. Hikaru, I can’t believe you. Didn’t you take an emergency response course while you were here?”

Hikaru sighed. 

“Yes, Aiko, it’s a required course.”

“Who was your professor?”

“Don’t you dare.”

Aiko shook her head a little bit in disapproval, but at least she didn’t seem like she was still planning on tracking down his old professor from Emergency Situations 101 and 102. Which he had passed with perfect scores both times, he wanted to add. 

“Well clearly Pavel learned something in that class, at least.”

“It was not such a big deal,” Pavel said, “anyone would have done what I did.”

Aiko thought about that for a few seconds, and maybe she didn’t totally believe what Pavel had said. Hikaru definitely didn’t believe it. Even the Captain had said that Pavel wouldn’t have tried so hard to find him if it had been anyone else.  _ Wouldn’t have hauled ass like he did _ , were his exact words. 

“At least both of you made it out alive,” she finally said, “it really sucks to have something like that happen in the last year of your mission. It looks like you’re doing okay, though.”

“We are.” Pavel said, and then Aiko really was quiet on the other side of the call, and Hikaru wondered if he needed to have the conversation with Pavel that his sisters were going to start thinking they were in a relationship if he wasn’t careful about saying things like that. 

“Okay, well I have another lecture in fifteen minutes and I want to get coffee first,” Aiko sighed, “it’s Intergalactic Diplomacy with first year students. Two and a half hours.”

“Good luck with that.” Hikaru could tell from her expression that she was going to need more than luck. Coffee, at least, would be a good start. She smiled and the three of them said goodbye before the call shut off and Hikaru dropped his PADD onto the empty part of the couch. Pavel didn’t say anything, but he moved over to give Hikaru a little bit of space, and put his hands into his own lap again. 

“You never told me that,” Hikaru said.

“Told you what?”

“What it was like on Ceron VI. For you.”

“I guess I didn’t want to talk about it.” Pavel leaned back against the couch cushions and almost started to look a little uncomfortable, the way he stared down at a corner of the couch cushion instead of looking at Hikaru while they talked. 

“If you ever want to talk about it, we can, you know.”

“I know.”

Pavel was always the more expressive one compared to Hikaru. Once he had become comfortable sharing his feelings it had been like a floodgate burst open. He always said what was on his mind and what was making him upset and told the truth even if it made both of them uncomfortable. And now with this topic it was like he was pulling away from Hikaru, closing his feelings off even though they both knew that they were there. And Hikaru really didn’t understand it, because he felt like they must be closer now than they had ever been. They slept in the same bed, for fuck’s sake. Pavel had gone into the shower with him. Hikaru almost died in his arms. And all of a sudden Pavel felt like there were things he needed to hide, and that made absolutely no sense.

Hikaru didn’t like it, and if he was maybe a little bit more assertive, a little bit more like Pavel, maybe he would have pressed him to talk through whatever it was in his head that he was trying to push down. 

Instead he just dropped it. But it gnawed at him for the rest of the day, not just to know that Pavel might still be hurting after what happened to them, to  _ him _ , but to know that Pavel didn’t feel like he could tell him. Weren’t they closer than that? 

It really felt like they were that night, in bed next to each other. Hikaru couldn’t fall asleep as fast as he usually did. He thought about waking Pavel up, trying to talk to him about it again so he could get rid of this weird feeling he’d had ever since Pavel went quiet across the couch from him. But Pavel was asleep, and peaceful, and snoring quietly. Hikaru moved his foot just a little bit until it was touching Pavel’s foot. Somehow it was enough for him to close his eyes again and fall asleep. 


	26. chapter twenty six: year eight

“You have to be careful with that.”

Pavel froze, looked up from where he was trying to manhandle Hikaru’s Aenerian Cactus out of its too-small pot so they could relocate it. He was wearing thick gardening gloves that made his hands almost comically big, especially paired with the skeptical look he was giving Hikaru. 

“It’s a cactus.” 

“Just be careful, okay, it’s my only one.”

Hikaru was a few feet away. He had been clipping leaf samples to put under the microscope until he looked up and saw Pavel trying to yank the cactus out of the pot like he had a personal vendetta. Pavel didn’t even used to hang out with him in the greenhouse, before, so it was a little bit strange this afternoon when he asked to come along, but Hikaru decided he could use the help. He was just maybe realizing that he’d given him the wrong task. 

“If anyone is going to get hurt in this situation I think it will be me,” Pavel muttered to himself, shoving his hands again into the little space left between the trunk of the cactus and the sides of the pot. Hikaru felt himself instinctively reach out, and he really didn’t know for whose wellbeing it was directed towards, Pavel or the cactus. He walked over. 

“It’s more delicate than most Earth species of cactus. You have to remove it carefully.” Even as he was giving Pavel instructions he came in behind him and slipped his own hands into the dirt. 

“You have to try to twist it, like this.”

Gently he started to rotate the base of the cactus, holding onto the thick roots underneath the soil, and Pavel’s hands tried to copy him, to help twist the cactus out. It wasn’t a small cactus, in a few months it had already surpassed loaf-of-bread size, but it definitely wasn’t big enough to need four hands holding it once they’d gotten it out of the soil. 

As luck would have it, the doors slid open just in time for whoever it was to walk in on the two of them pressed together, holding a cactus in the air in front of them. 

“Am I interrupting something?”

It was the Captain. His tone of voice made it sound like he had walked in on some sort of plant-themed foreplay. Hikaru thought about letting go of the roots, but he worried that if he was too abrupt Pavel might do something like drop his hands as well or jerk the cactus forward and impale himself, so he didn’t move. Jim looked like he was clearly trying not to make any judgements, although the words he’d already said had gone far enough. 

“Oh, uh. Hi.” Hikaru still hadn’t moved. Neither had Pavel. They were still standing there like that. After one more second of Jim staring at them half confused and half like he was holding back another innuendo Hikaru cleared his throat awkwardly and looked over at Pavel, who had more of a deer-in-the-headlights expression, eyes wide like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. 

“We can just...put this...down. Do you have the second pot...yeah.”

Hikaru felt himself starting to sweat. Pavel just nodded and they lowered the cactus into its bigger pot, even though it wasn’t filled with soil yet. Hikaru could deal with that later. The more pressing issue right now had to be recovering from what Jim had just walked in on. 

Once their hands were free they separated so quickly it must have been like watching two magnets repel each other. 

“Anyway--” Jim started, right at the same time that Hikaru was forcing out,

“What can I do for you?”

“--I just wanted to check in on you. Heard from Bones that your last checkup was all good.”

“Oh, well. Thanks. I’m doing great, actually.”

Jim’s eyes moved from where they were trained on Hikaru, to Pavel a few feet away, and then back. 

“I see.”

Hikaru didn’t want to risk looking at Pavel himself, but he could imagine him standing there fidgeting with his big gloves on, maybe he was blushing. Hikaru was surprised that  _ he _ wasn’t blushing. The tension in the room was really almost unbearable. 

“Also,” Jim’s mouth just kept quirking up in the corner even as he kept his diplomatic posture, but now his face got more serious. “We were approved for an additional shore leave. On Earth.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” Now Hikaru felt his face heat up a little, but not because of Pavel and the cactus and Jim showing up unannounced. He knew that the decision to go back to Earth for an extra shore leave was almost exclusively because of the accident on Ceron VI, so he could see his family and spend some days at home to help him recover. It was pretty common practice when tragedy struck, but usually changing the whole course of the ship for a two-week shore leave required a little more severity than just a slightly bruised Lieutenant. 

“Everyone on the crew voted in favor of it. We want you to have this.”

Hikaru turned over his shoulder where Pavel was behind him and Pavel smiled a little bit, even though his cheeks were still tinted pink from embarrassment. 

“Thank you,” Hikaru finally said, looking back to Jim. 

“Of course.”

Under different circumstances Jim probably would have stuck around and had Hikaru show him what he was working on. He was the one who had given Hikaru full reign on the greenhouse in the first place, back during the first year when Hikaru needed a hobby and the ship needed someone who gave enough of a shit about keeping track of plant samples. This time Jim left almost as abruptly as he entered, nodding and giving a very suggestive sounding  _ I’ll leave you to it _ before turning on his heel and leaving the greenhouse. 

Hikaru let out an audible sigh that turned into a laugh at the end over how ridiculous the last ten minutes had felt. 

“Does he think we’re dating?” Pavel asked, and Hikaru was surprised that he did, because he’d figured Pavel was smart enough to know already what kind of an impression the two of them were giving off. 

“If he didn’t before, he definitely does now,” Hikaru said, still staring at the closed door Jim had just walked through. He didn’t want to know what Pavel’s face looked like now, if he thought it was funny, or if his face turned red again, or if he was smiling, or worse, cringing at the thought of the Captain assuming the two of them were together. He just let that question go unanswered and focused back on getting leaf samples. When he finally did look over his shoulder again at Pavel, he was haphazardly balancing the cactus in one hand while he scooped soil into the pot with another. 

“Hold on, stop that,” Hikaru abandoned his work again so he could walk over, “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

This time, when they were really alone, and Hikaru was showing Pavel the best way to put the cactus into its new pot, he couldn’t really think about the cactus at all. He stood behind Pavel and helped him settle the cactus into the soil, hands occasionally resting on top of Pavel’s while they buried the roots, and he thought about the smell of shampoo from Pavel’s hair, the warmth of his arms that he could feel through their shirtsleeves, the concentrated little look on his face while he tried to understand why Hikaru was even into this stuff. Still, he smiled so big when it was all done, and Hikaru could actually feel his knees go weak. He was really a goner. He had been ever since the first time he’d woken up and seen Pavel in his bed first thing in the morning and felt something warm and glowing in his chest. But now he was actually self aware. And he was a goner.

 

-

 

So Hikaru was maybe realizing that he had developed romantic feelings for his best friend. Once he  _ knew _ that that’s what was going on with him, it actually wasn’t too hard to come to terms with. Their friendship wasn’t exactly the epitome of platonic, with how much time they spent together and how much they had started to incorporate physical touch, first when they were comforting each other, and now more casually. Pavel would stretch his legs to rest over Hikaru’s lap while they sat on the couch together, or stand behind him sometimes and massage his shoulders, working the knot he always got right under his shoulder blade from sitting at the helm all day with his hand on the controls. Hikaru had taken to leaning his head against Pavel’s shoulder when he called him over to show him something on his PADD, or fluffing his hair in the morning when he still looked so tired and out of it that it was almost adorable. In fact it was enough that Hikaru really didn’t stress over his romantic attraction to Pavel, because their relationship almost satisfied those needs, in a way.

But he hadn’t considered the possibility of feeling other types of attraction to Pavel, and he really should have seen it coming when he had finished coming to terms with the things he already felt. He should have seen it coming and he should have considered finding a new workout partner. 

Hikaru wished he was in good enough shape to run on the treadmill, or do some fencing, or anything else that gave him something to focus on other than his workout partner. Instead Pavel had designed an interval workout for them that involved a lot of passing weights back and forth and holding hands and counting for one another and otherwise being right next to each other the whole time. 

Hikaru tried not to stare as their workout went longer and Pavel’s cheeks started to turn pink and his skin started to shine with sweat. He tried, but he probably wasn’t that successful. It just didn’t seem fair that someone could look so good in the middle of a workout. Pavel didn’t seem to notice him staring, which was good, because Hikaru was sure that he looked like a sweaty creep. 

After their last circuit of core exercises Pavel got up to get some water and Hikaru just collapsed into the floor. He rolled his aching muscles over until he was lying on his stomach, face pressed against the yoga mat. He could hear Pavel quietly laughing at him from the water fountain, and then his footsteps as he came back. 

“Aren’t you thirsty?” Pavel asked, squatting down next to him. Hikaru moved his head so he could see, feeling his cheek squish against the floor. 

“I can’t move.”

“Don’t be a baby.”

“I’m still recovering, you know.”

Pavel rolled his eyes, but Hikaru could see that he wanted to smile. He stood up and walked away again only to come back with a cup of water. Hikaru watched him move in his regulation workout set, loose red shorts that covered just the top of his thighs and a matching compression top that seemed to be getting tighter around his shoulders every year. The bright red fabric contrasted so strongly with his pale skin, but he looked  _ good _ , mostly because of the parts of him not covered by clothing: the long, lean muscles of his legs, his arms that were getting stronger and the veins starting to show along his wrists, his  _ face _ . Hikaru looked back at his face when he turned around, at the blush in his cheeks from exercise. He wondered what else could make Pavel’s cheeks turn red like that. 

All of a sudden he was glad he’d made the decision to lie on his stomach, because it was helping with the physical response of him noticing so much about Pavel’s body at once. 

That being said, he still had to get up to take the water Pavel brought him. He tried to clear his head as quickly as possible and slowly pushed himself up into a seat. 

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Pavel was leaning over him, apparently unsure if he should laugh at Hikaru’s pain or feel guilty. 

“No, no, I’m fine.” Hikaru finished drinking and laid back down, covered his face with his arm so he would stop staring at his friend like that. “I was just being a baby.”

He could hear Pavel rolling up his yoga mat next to him.

Pavel laughed after another minute of Hikaru refusing to move. 

“Do you need me to carry you?”

And Hikaru lifted his arm to look over at him, and Pavel was smiling at him, and he was struck with another terrifying realization:  _ was Pavel flirting with him?  _

“Don’t make me an offer like that when you know that  _ I _ know that you’re strong enough to carry me.”

_ Oh god. Was Hikaru flirting back? _

Thankfully they didn’t go any further in that particular topic of banter but Pavel did pull Hikaru to his feet before they went to shower, and Hikaru could only notice how easy it felt to take Pavel’s hand and be lifted up. 


	27. chapter twenty seven: year eight

Hikaru thought the nightmares were over. He thought they’d fixed it when Pavel moved in and his subconscious brain stopped thinking he was in danger every night. So when he had another, for the first time in more than a month, he was really just pissed off. He forced himself out of bed and into the bathroom so he could turn the lights on and splash water on his face and remind his body that he was fine, everything was fucking fine, he was alive in his quarters and he wasn’t in pain anymore and there was absolutely  _ no _ reason to be afraid. 

Christine had told him to repeat those types of affirmations in his head, after she’d told him for maybe the tenth time that she wasn’t actually a counselor. He’d thought it was cheesy but here he was, staring at himself in the mirror and thinking again and again  _ there’s no reason to be afraid _ like it was the only thing his instincts remembered how to do. 

He didn’t know how long he was in there, but by the time his heart rate slowed down again and he could relax his grip on the countertop he didn’t see the point in trying to go back to sleep. He took a shower. 

Somehow Pavel had managed to sleep through everything until Hikaru opened the bathroom door, and the light flooding out from the bathroom made him shift and sigh and turn over in bed. 

“What time is it,” said the rough, barely-audible voice from under the covers. 

“I don’t know.”

“Why are you awake.” Pavel started to sound more alive at the end of that one. Hikaru looked over from where he was standing at his dresser and he had moved the blanket down so he could squint at him. “Why did you wake me up.”

“I don’t know. I just woke up, I guess.”

Pavel stared at him, eyes gradually starting to qualify as open. He had that look on his face like maybe he was struggling to locate his thoughts in the right language. 

“Did you have a bad dream.”

Hikaru took a deep breath. He did have a bad dream, and he was still mad about it, and he didn’t want to tell Pavel because then he would ask him  _ why _ he hadn’t woken Pavel up and  _ why _ he hadn’t asked for help and  _ what  _ they had done wrong that he’d had a nightmare for the first time in a month. He just wanted to pretend that it hadn’t happened, that he hadn’t broken his streak of full, real nights of sleep. Pavel pushed himself up on his elbows. 

“Did you,” he asked again, head and eyelids heavy. Hikaru really didn’t want to be having this conversation right now. He was already in a bad mood, and it looked like Pavel was in a bad mood being woken up before 0500, and now Pavel was demanding that he make it worse for both of them by talking about his stupid nightmare. He nearly huffed this time, threw his towel in the direction of the bathroom so he could put his boxers on, nevermind that Pavel might be staring at him the entire time while he waited for an answer. 

He looked over his shoulder as he unceremoniously bent over and Pavel was doing exactly that. 

“Yes, okay? Is that what you want to hear first thing in the morning?”

Pavel blinked at him slowly.

“Why didn’t you tell me.”

“I’m telling you now. Is that not enough.” Hikaru searched through his drawers for an undershirt, one of  _ his _ undershirts, because he and Pavel were close enough in size that it usually didn’t matter but this morning it mattered. He was his own damn person and he could talk himself down from a nightmare and he could wear his own shirt, god  _ damn _ it. 

“So you decided to hide in the bathroom instead of asking for help.”

“What does it matter,” Hikaru said, refusing to look over at Pavel in the bed, where, first thing in the morning, he somehow managed to come off as both nagging and sympathetic at the same time. 

“Because I could have helped you.”

Hikaru wanted to say _ I don’t need help _ but Pavel would have immediately called him on it. He knew it would have been a lie, anyway. And  _ I don’t want your help _ would have been a lie, too. Eventually he just said, 

“I shouldn’t still need help like this.”

“Do you want me to move out?” Pavel asked, and his voice was finally clear this time, and a little bit louder, and god, he had gone from nagging to pissed off really fast. Hikaru felt like a knife was being twisted into his heart at the idea that Pavel could ever think that he wants that. He realized his mouth had fallen open when he finally turned and was looking back at Pavel. 

“No! God. Don’t say that.” Hikaru felt embarrassed at his own reaction, and then he felt mad at Pavel for even bringing it up when he must have known Hikaru would react like that, and then he just felt exponentially more mad at himself and the universe and the fact that it wasn’t even 0500. 

“So why are you talking like this to me.”

“I’m just mad, okay! Am I not allowed to be mad about it?”

He angrily tried to pull his pants on next and it took three tries to get his fucking left foot through the pant leg and he almost wanted to just give up and storm off, pants or not. Pavel blinked at him. He was sitting all the way up now. 

“Did you think your recovery was going to be so easy like that?”

“ _ Easy? _ ”

“Easy was maybe the wrong word--”

“Whatever. You know what--whatever.” Hikaru knelt down to fasten his boots. “Maybe I just want to be done with the nightmares and shit so I can stop feeling so pathetic.”

“You’re not pathetic.”

“Are you telling me it’s normal for a twenty four year old man to need someone to hold his hand every night just to fall asleep?” Hikaru felt his face heating up even as he said it, probably because it was the first time he had actually brought it up in conversation, the first time he’d forced himself to acknowledge out loud that he really did need Pavel in bed next to him to fall asleep. It made him feel like such a loser.

“Why do you care so much about what is normal?” Pavel snapped at him. 

“Why do you care what I care about?”

“Because I care about  _ you _ , you idiot!” Pavel’s eyebrows knit together, his hands fisted in the blanket across his lap and Hikaru could tell that he probably felt the urge to stand up, to size him up, maybe to emphasize that he was just a bit taller than Hikaru now and bigger than he used to be and that after seven years he’d known Hikaru long enough to feel entitled to know about his feelings. But he stayed on the bed, continued to stare Hikaru down when he said, “Do you know how much this insecurity shit you’re giving me is pissing me off?”

Pavel really didn’t curse that often, which is what made it all the more painful to hear, coupled with the way he seemed to see right through Hikaru. Hikaru just crossed his arms over his chest and worked his jaw and broke eye contact with Pavel so he could stare down at the corner of the bed instead. 

“Has it ever occurred to you that I  _ want _ to help you?” Pavel asked, “Or are you too obsessed with this idea that everyone feels sorry for you?”

“I don’t--” Hikaru was going to say  _ I don’t think that _ , but he wasn’t actually sure. Maybe Pavel was right. At so many points in his recovery he had had the thought that he should have been doing better, that everyone must see him and think about how long he was taking to get over what happened to him. These weren’t things he had really said out loud, though. He had no idea how Pavel seemed to know. 

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Oh great.”

Hikaru was fully dressed now. He could have just left it at that, gone to the mess for breakfast and then maybe to vent to Christine before work. He  _ should _ have left. He should have left and given them time to cool off after what they had already said to each other at this point. But he stayed, because  _ now _ Pavel was being a hypocrite, on top of being nosy and overbearing and caring too much about him. 

“Don’t act like there aren’t things you won’t talk about with me.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m tired of you pretending that I’m the only one that needs to recover from anything. We both got hurt on Ceron VI, you know. And all you want to do is talk about how  _ I’m _ struggling, and I’m tired of it.”

“You’re not my therapist.”

“And you’re not mine!”

“So do you want me to move out.”

Hikaru covered his face in his hands and almost wanted to scream into them. Instead he just dragged them down his face and turned away from Pavel and slammed his dresser drawers shut and walked away from the bed, towards the door. He didn’t look back and Pavel called after him again.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“You are so immature,” Hikaru spat out.

“Answer my question.”

Hikaru looked over his shoulder. Pavel’s cheeks were red and blotchy and he was so mad that there was that little line between his eyebrows and it almost reminded him of how they used to fight when they were first getting on each other’s nerves at the Academy. Except now they knew each other, too well sometimes. Pavel knew what he could say to make Hikaru angry and how he could get Hikaru to tell him what he wanted to hear and honestly Hikaru just did not need that right now. He stabbed at the keypad to open the door so he could storm out after getting the last word. 

“Stop saying that just to make me remind you that I need you!”

And maybe they weren’t the only people awake right now and maybe somebody heard his voice echoing through the hallway, but he really only cared that Pavel heard him yell, and that, even with how mad he was, he heard him yell that he still needed him.

 

-

 

It had been a pretty long time since Pavel had felt the urge to hide from him, but Hikaru still knew exactly where to find him when he came back to his quarters later that night and Pavel still wasn’t around. In their first few months on the Enterprise, when things were still weird between them, Hikaru had made a short list of the most common places where Pavel would go to avoid him. Although he’d never admit how he found those places, the number of times he’d asked the computer to show him Pavel’s location just out of curiosity. Back then he didn’t even know if they were ever going to be friends again like they had been before, but he just felt like it might be important someday. The ship had turned Pavel into a creature of habit and Hikaru would continue to find him hiding out in the same three places he’d written down on his list:

  1. The observation deck, where the whole ceiling was transparent and you could sit and watch the entire galaxy go by. Pavel would spend hours here even when he wasn’t trying to hide from Hikaru, so it wasn’t the most clever hiding spot.
  2. One of the walkways in the east wing of the Engineering decks, where the quieter, more technical work was done on the floor, mostly building small replacements to ship hardware or repairing existing parts. Pavel liked to sit there on the catwalk suspended above the activity, watching the Engineering crew move around and search for parts and build things. The number of times Hikaru found him there started to make him wonder if Pavel had chosen the right track at the Academy.
  3. The botanical garden, even though it was on the same deck as the greenhouse and therefore a shitty place to try to hide from Hikaru. But Pavel managed to make himself unfindable between the trees and sometimes Hikaru would have to give up and wait it out. 



He found Pavel in the observation deck, which was the first place he went to look for him. And if Pavel really had wanted to hide, he wouldn’t have been there. Hikaru sat down next to him, quiet at first. They just sat on the floor and watched the stars pass above their heads. Hikaru craned his neck back to try to see as much as he could. Every time he came here to find Pavel it always made him question why he never just came for himself, to sit here and remember how amazing their lives are. 

After a little while he looked over at Pavel. His arms were wrapped around his knees, a pose which once upon a time used to make Pavel look so small, but now that he was nothing but long legs and long arms and strong shoulders it just looked like he was trying, and failing, to shrink himself. Pavel didn’t look at him, even though Hikaru was sure he had noticed he was being stared at. But he didn’t stop. He watched the blue light shining off of Pavel’s face, highlighting just the lines of his nose or his cheekbone or his forehead as the stars flew by. 

He wanted to say _ I’m sorry _ . He wanted to say  _ sorry for hurting you _ and  _ sorry you went through so much _ and  _ sorry I’m so selfish and needy that you didn’t feel like you could tell me. _ He wanted to say  _ I’m sorry _ and  _ you can tell me _ and  _ I need you _ and 

_ I love you _ . 

All of those words at once lumped together and stopped in his throat and threatened to bring tears out with them. He waited for it to pass, watched Pavel’s face, his strong, silent, gentle, beautiful face under the light of the stars. 

“Did you ever think we would end up here?” Hikaru finally asked, and he saw Pavel’s mouth twitching up into a little smile like he was about to say something dumb. 

“In space?” He replied, turning to Hikaru with a sarcastic look on his face. 

“Ha ha. You are so funny.”

Pavel smiled at him, and then turned back to watching the stars while he said, 

“I guess I imagined how things might be. But then what actually happened I wasn’t ready for.”

Hikaru breathed out a laugh at the idea that it was possible to ever be ready to watch your best friend die.

“Next time you are going to try and get yourself killed,” Pavel said, “I expect at least a two week notice.”

“I’ll remember that."

“I just try not to think, if it hadn’t happened, if things still could have been like this.”

“Don’t think about that.”

Hikaru wanted to reach for Pavel, to touch his knee, his hand, to lean his head against his shoulder or put his arm around his back, or scoot closer until they were pressed together from thigh to hip to torso. For some reason it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do. They had gotten accustomed to touching without talking about it, and something told Hikaru that they needed to do things the other way around, this time. 

“Haven’t you questioned it, too?”

“Of course I did.”

“And what do you think,” Pavel asked. 

“I think,” Hikaru swallowed, but his throat wasn’t closing up this time. The words were on the edge of his tongue and they were ready to come out, and they didn’t hurt at all when they did. “I think I would have realized at some point how I feel about you. Even without almost dying.”

“Do you really think that.”

“I do.”

Pavel nodded, and when he finally looked Hikaru in the eyes again he didn’t look angry like this morning, or sad, or nervous. He was just Pavel, calm and steady and so strong underneath it all. 

“You know I don’t just take care of you because I feel like I have to,” Pavel said, and for a second Hikaru felt like he was changing the subject, but he wasn’t, really. “Or because I pity you. I do it because need it too. I couldn’t sleep alone, either, after what I saw.”

Hikaru’s chest tightened to think of Pavel lying awake all night while he was having nightmares in his quarters alone. He realized, then, what must really have been happening during those first nights when Pavel came to stay with him. He was always such a heavy sleeper, but somehow every time Hikaru woke up he was there next to him, awake. He probably hadn’t slept at all while he waited, watched, made sure Hikaru was doing okay. 

“Thank you,” was all Hikaru could say, “For taking care of me.”

Pavel smiled at him, and it wasn’t the same as the silly, sarcastic smile from before. It was smaller, gentler, a little bit distant.  _ You’re welcome. _

“I know that it’s going to pass. And I won’t always need your help like this.” 

Hikaru felt trapped in Pavel’s gaze, as much as he normally would have wanted to make a confession like this to his lap or the floor or the wall. Hikaru couldn’t look away. And he didn’t want to look away when he said,

“But even when it’s better, I want...I want to know if I can still ask you to sleep next to me.”

Finally Pavel touched him, unraveling his arms from around his knees so he could place his hand on Hikaru’s wrist, the same place he held him during that first night in sickbay, and it still sent a rush of warmth and comfort through his entire body like it had that night when he was in so much pain he didn’t know if he could take another breath. 

“You don’t have to ask me ever again.”


	28. chapter twenty eight: year eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND IT ONLY TOOK TWENTY EIGHT CHAPTERS. sorry for the wait, the sex starts now

Hikaru thought he knew everything about Pavel; he thought he’d seen every side of him. After nearly seven years of friendship, he wouldn’t have guessed that there was still more to learn. 

He was wrong. 

Pavel his best friend for seven years was different from Pavel in his arms, Pavel kissing him, pulling gently at his shirt, quietly sighing into his mouth. The first time they kissed each other was in the turbolift, unable to make it all the way back to Hikaru’s quarters from the observation deck, and Hikaru realized that there was so much he still didn’t know about Pavel, so many things he would get to learn.

Like how Pavel kissed. How he kissed him like he had nowhere else to be, nothing else to think about. Pavel kissed him eagerly, over and over, sometimes barely stopping to take a full breath. But he never pushed further, and yet it never seemed like he was holding back, either. He seemed perfectly content to just stay for hours and explore Hikaru’s mouth and press kisses all over his face and neck and twist their hands together and laugh when they accidentally knocked their teeth against each other’s. He kissed playfully, happily, perfectly. And Hikaru couldn’t imagine how any kiss before Pavel’s had ever been good. 

It was so good that he hardly even had time, laying in bed with Pavel again, both of them dressed to sleep, to panic when he remembered that Pavel knew that he hadn’t had sex before. 

But the thought left his mind as quickly as it entered; Pavel didn’t care. He must not have cared, the way he didn’t tiptoe around physical contact with him. Still, he didn’t push Hikaru on it, not that it looked like he was even thinking about it, the way he got so wrapped up in just kissing and touching and holding each other, as if that was all there was and all there needed to be. 

So they were taking things a little slow, most likely for Hikaru’s sake. Hikaru tried not to think too hard about that as he tried to sleep, Pavel already passed out next to him. He knew he was fine with slow. All of his past, failed, short-lived relationships before this had been so slow that he’d never had a chance to have sex before they ended. And they had time. They would have all the time they needed and more. 

That thought was enough for Hikaru to relax, to give one last kiss to Pavel’s forehead, hear him sniffle and shift and start snoring again, and fall asleep.

 

-

 

The next day at work after that was completely normal, which could have been a testament to the fact that they had basically been a couple for a while already. For weeks, now, Hikaru had already been sneaking glances at Pavel from across the helm, he had already been planning all of his time outside of their shifts around spending time with him. They were already inseparable, anyway. A part of him had assumed that maybe things would feel different; new, somehow, now that they had put words to these feelings that had existed for god knows how long. But other than the occasional moment where Hikaru remembered the night before and everything that had happened--and everything that could be, from now on--the shift passed like any other. 

If anything that just outlined how  _ right _ it all felt. How perfectly Pavel fit into his life: into his peripheral vision while he worked, into the seat across from him in the mess, into his bed, and in his arms. All of it made sense together. 

Pavel still made sarcastic jokes in the turbolift, he still sat and drank tea while he waited for Hikaru to finish eating, he still talked Hikaru’s ear off about whatever was on his mind while they walked and while they sat on the couch in his quarters. And now he wrapped his arms around him, too, and pressed their lips together. He ran his fingers through Hikaru’s hair and climbed into his lap and trailed kisses along his neck and it all made sense. Hikaru had never felt like this part was missing from their relationship, before, but now he had no idea how anything with Pavel ever felt complete before they had touched each other like this. 

 

-

 

Sharing a bed was already intimate when they were doing it before, and Hikaru didn’t think it was going to be such a different experience after they’d admitted they had feelings for each other. Their relationship had been changing in some ways since then, but they still went to sleep in the same way every night, without either of them needing to be invited into bed. Hikaru figured that, because it hadn’t been sexual before, it wouldn’t change to be sexual overnight. And in the beginning he was right; so right that he started to wonder if that part of their relationship was going to change at all. 

He and Pavel had gone to sleep normally, collapsed into his bed after a long shift followed by the gym, and they were so tired they fell asleep before anything else could have happened between them. 

Hikaru woke up a few hours later, though, because Pavel kept talking to him and pulling on his shirt. It took him a few seconds to realize that this was something happening to him in real life and not in some sort of secondary dream. 

“Wake up,” Pavel whispered.

Hikaru hummed. 

“Hikaru.”

“What.”

“Wake up, please.”

“Mmh.” 

Hikaru rolled onto his back and tried to keep his eyes open. It was too dark in his quarters to see anything, but he couldn’t think of a better way to stay awake. In a few seconds Pavel had moved to follow him, first with his hands spreading over Hikaru’s chest, and then he was half on top of him, pressing their bodies together. 

“Why am I awake.” Hikaru breathed, feeling himself on the edge of falling back asleep.

“I need you.”

“Can you need me in a few hours.”

“No, right now.”

Pavel’s hands were on the sides of his face, then, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, and if he wanted to keep Hikaru awake he really needed to stop that. Hikaru yawned. 

“Okay. What do you need me to do.”

Pavel huffed a little bit and shifted so more of his body was on top of Hikaru, and that was what it took for Hikaru to put the different pieces together. The things Pavel was saying, his hands all over him, pulling on his shirt, and now the feeling of him all but straddling across Hikaru’s thigh. To be fair, Hikaru had just barely woken up a minute ago. Pavel should have been a little more direct if he didn’t want to wait for him to come to that conclusion on his own. 

“Did you just wake me up in the middle of the night because you’re horny.”

“Yes.”

Hikaru didn’t know if he was happy about that or not, but Pavel was so clearly begging for attention that he couldn’t just do  _ nothing _ . He reached for Pavel’s waist, holding him tightly, and pulled him to lay on top of him all the way.  

“How did that happen,” Hikaru asked. 

“I had a dream.”

“About me?”

“No, about Commander Spock,” Pavel said dryly. He leaned forward into the pillows, his mouth just barely touching the skin of Hikaru’s neck, “Yes about you.”

“How did I do?”

“I can’t remember. But good, I guess.”

Pavel was clearly fidgeting around over Hikaru to try and find some sort of position and angle that felt good against his dick. Hikaru just slid his hands up and down his lower back, to his small waist, making sure that no matter how he moved around Pavel was still there for him to hold. Finally Pavel shifted a little bit and pressed against Hikaru’s own hardening cock and they both breathed in sharply. 

Hikaru should have been thinking about how he had never done anything like this before. He should have been worrying about where his hands were supposed to go and how his body was supposed to react to things. At least that’s what he always expected to feel like, even when he was imagining that these things would be happening with Pavel. But he wasn’t thinking about any of that at all. 

Instead of staying right at that position Pavel moved back slightly, and then forward, lining up their cocks again, and in a few seconds he had found a rhythm moving back and forth and Hikaru couldn’t breathe. His hand came up to pull on the short hair at the nape of Pavel’s neck, and just this, when both of them were still fully clothed and rutting against each other like teenagers, was already so good he couldn’t think about what might come next. 

Pulling on Pavel’s hair seemed to be something that he liked, judging by how he lost his pace when Hikaru’s hand moved to his neck. So Hikaru slid his hand into the curls on the top of his head and pulled hard enough to jerk his head back, and then he kissed him on his open mouth. Pavel really struggled to keep moving after that, with Hikaru’s hand in his hair and his tongue in his mouth and pretty soon he was just desperately writhing over Hikaru trying to find some sort of friction. Since he couldn’t seem to handle so many things at once Hikaru rolled them over so he could push Pavel into the mattress and keep his attention focused on the warmth of his mouth. 

Pavel kissed him back, eagerly, hands fisting in Hikaru’s shirt as he kept trying to pull him closer. Hikaru wondered where this had been before, why Pavel was so needy all of a sudden, and how much he must have been holding himself back until now. Now he reached for more and more and more, desperately, restlessly. Hikaru wanted to give him everything, but he was face to face with all of the things that he didn’t know about sex, about what Pavel liked, what he wanted. All he really felt sure about was kissing Pavel slow and deep and holding him against the bed until he finally stopped moving around so much. Pavel whined, like it still wasn’t enough, and Hikaru knew he was right. 

“Do you dream about me a lot.”

“Yes,” Pavel breathed.

“And then what do you do.”

“I think about you.” Pavel turned so his mouth was next to Hikaru’s ear, “And how much I want you.”

“And what do you  _ do _ ,” Hikaru asked. He had started asking these questions because he really was curious, but the more aroused he became Hikaru could hear his voice getting lower, rough and almost commanding. 

“I make myself come.”

“I want you to show me,” Hikaru said, and then “Lights, ten percent.”

It was just enough that they could see each other now without their eyes really having to adjust. And when Hikaru saw Pavel lying underneath him he felt a rush of heat through his entire body. Pavel’s mouth fell open as he breathed in long, heavy breaths, and he looked up at him through his lashes like he couldn’t bear to look away. Even in the dim light Hikaru could see the color high in his cheeks, flushing down his neck and, he guessed, below the collar of his shirt. He wanted to push Pavel’s shirt up to his neck to find out how low his blush went, to explore the pale skin and muscular lines of his chest, but that could wait. He leaned to the side and supported himself on one arm, skating his eyes down to see that Pavel had already slipped his hand inside his boxer briefs. 

“Show me,” he repeated, and Pavel obeyed without a second thought, pushing the waistband of his underwear down around his dick so Hikaru could see him stroking himself. 

Hikaru was caught between wanting to watch his face, to watch his mouth forming around the desperate noises he was making, and wanting to watch how he touched himself with short, fast strokes, bringing himself to the edge like Hikaru had told him to. He saw how Pavel writhed underneath him and still never let his eyes close, looking up at Hikaru like he expected more direction, and felt intoxicated by the power of keeping Pavel like this without laying a hand on him. He wanted to touch him, of course, so much that he felt like his hands were buzzing, but even more than that he wanted to watch Pavel, first. He would have plenty of time to make these discoveries with his hands later. 

“Touch me, please.” Pavel’s voice almost broke at the end. Hikaru studied his face. 

“Keep going,” he ordered, and he really had no idea where any of this was coming from, but Pavel moaned softly and desperately at the command and he could see that Pavel  _ liked _ this. Being bossed around. Having his hair pulled. Hikaru was already learning more than he thought. 

“Please,” Pavel breathed. 

He decided he didn’t want to keep teasing him so much, especially since he was asking so nicely. So he finally moved his hand to Pavel’s cheek, tilting his face towards him. He leaned his head down and captured Pavel’s mouth with his own. Pavel kissed him back, urgently and bordering on obscene when he slipped his tongue into Hikaru’s mouth. His free hand wrapped across Hikaru’s shoulders, but Hikaru didn’t let himself be pulled any closer, didn’t want anything to interfere with Pavel’s other hand. 

“You are torturing me,” Pavel groaned, their lips brushing together. Hikaru kissed the corners of his mouth even as he frowned, and just said, 

“Then stroke yourself faster.”

Pavel made an exasperated noise and Hikaru leaned up to look at him again, at his expression of  _ you’re unbelievable _ even though he was doing exactly as he was told. His hand sped up around his dick, moving fast enough that his back started to arch off of the bed, and Hikaru just watched him, absolutely mesmerized in seeing him fall apart like this. 

“I’m really close.” Pavel was still looking up at Hikaru expectantly, and he realized that it wasn’t so much of a warning as it was him asking for permission. Hikaru brushed his thumb across his cheek and took in his desperate face and finally gave in.

“It’s okay. I want you to come.”

And then he was coming before Hikaru had even really finished his sentence, throwing his head back against the pillows while his orgasm tore through him. Hikaru tried to write every second of it into his memory, the way Pavel’s muscles tightened, the way his eyes squeezed shut and his eyebrows knit together and the shape of his open mouth as he held his breath. 

A stripe of come landed on Pavel’s cheek and if Hikaru had been touching himself he would have come too just from the sight of him, flushed and gasping for air and covered in his own come. Pavel’s chest heaved and when he opened his eyes again he looked so exhausted and adorable that Hikaru really had no choice but to pull him into his arms. 

“Do you feel better now?” He spread his hand across Pavel’s back and smiled at the way Pavel all but melted against him. Of all the things he had imagined about having sex, he hadn’t thought about what it would be like afterwards. Pavel was warm and sleepy and heavy in bed next to him, seemingly unable to move his body with all the endorphins that had just rushed through him. 

“Mmhpf,” was all Pavel said, and then he moved his face out of Hikaru’s chest. “You didn’t come.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

Hikaru pulled Pavel’s face up to his own and kissed him again, enjoying the feeling of Pavel’s slow, lazy mouth trying to kiss him back despite his fatigue. He didn’t mind taking the lead, this time trying something new and biting down just slightly on Pavel’s lip. He was rewarded with a small little gasp and Pavel’s hands tightening in Hikaru’s shirt. 

“How about we sleep now and you worry about making me come later.”

Pavel pouted for a second before nodded and settled his head back against the pillow, pulled Hikaru’s arms to wrap around him again. Hikaru kissed his face one last time, the spot on his forehead between his eyebrows. They fell asleep with the lights still at ten percent. 


	29. chapter twenty nine: year eight

Hikaru could tell now that things were changing between the two of them, especially after last night. Pavel really must have been holding back, before, waiting to see how much Hikaru was comfortable with and never really asking for what he wanted, but now he seemed to be warming up. They spent ten extra minutes in bed that morning, with Pavel spread warm and heavy over him like a blanket, kissing his face like he couldn’t get enough. He almost made the two of them late when he stopped Hikaru halfway through getting dressed to crowd him against his dresser and kiss him again until they were both short of breath. 

It was difficult to sit across from him at the helm for an entire shift and try to pretend it was a normal day, when his mind kept wandering back to his memories of Pavel, drunk with arousal, laying in bed underneath him and looking straight into his eyes as he stroked himself. It was a situation Hikaru couldn’t even have dreamed up, and the curiosity that it had sparked in him about what else they could do seemed to be impossible to abandon in favor of piloting the ship. 

He had no idea how he managed to survive his shift, and then dinner, and then a medical check up in sickbay, before he was finally back in his quarters, alone with Pavel. Pavel, who was definitely on the same page and practically jumped him as soon as he returned from sickbay. 

“Why did you take so long,” Pavel complained, kissing a trail along the line of Hikaru’s jaw, hands already pulling at his uniform. 

“Do you think I  _ wanted _ to be sitting in sickbay for forty five minutes just now.” Hikaru tilted his head to meet Pavel’s mouth with his own, sliding his hands down to his waist and pulling him closer. He kissed him deeply and then pulled back a bit, to add, “I was sitting there for what felt like forever, while Doctor McCoy did all these tests, and trying not to think about you so much that the tricorder picked it up.”

“That would have been a funny conversation with the Doctor.”

“Do you know horny you make me,” Hikaru asked quietly, hoping to access his commanding tone from the night before even though he couldn’t help but be a little bit whiny over it, “How horny I was at the helm all fucking day?” he whispered. 

Pavel just sighed, and he was so close that Hikaru could feel his chest move with every inhale and exhale of breath. He decided he could postpone trying out more dirty talk, because the urge to kiss Pavel was way, way more important. 

Somehow in between trying to kiss every part of Pavel that was within reach, and using his hands for everything that wasn’t, the two of them made it to the bed. Or, at least, slightly closer to the bed. Pavel pulled his uniform shirt over his head, and even seeing just the tight black shirt underneath made Hikaru’s head spin. The way it showed off the width of his chest and his waist and left his shoulders and arms bare. Hikaru forgot that there was more for Pavel to take off, forgot that  _ he _ even had clothes to take off, and had to pull Pavel back into his arms. 

Hikaru’s shirts came off, eventually, and he didn’t know why his heart sped up at that. Pavel had seen him without them; he had seen when the bandages first came off after the accident and his scars were at their worst. But it still felt like so much was hanging in the moments after he pulled his shirts off, in the expression on Pavel’s face before he slowly reached for him. Pavel’s hands floated gently across Hikaru’s chest and down his torso, and he didn’t hesitate when they reached the edge of his scars where the skin turned rough. He seemed to understand why Hikaru held his breath. 

It wasn’t even remotely the first time Pavel had seen them, of course, and they had talked about it, and Hikaru wouldn’t have expected it to pull so strongly at his heart when Pavel sank to his knees, leaned forward, and pressed his lips against his torso. Finally he could breathe again. He exhaled, softly, his hands coming to rest on Pavel’s shoulders as he continued to kiss along the angry lines that cut into his skin. He couldn’t help shivering under the feeling of Pavel’s mouth on him like this. There was an energy running through his body, like he was in sickbay under the regenerator again. 

After a minute Pavel stopped, and Hikaru heard him take a deep breath. He leaned forward, his forehead coming to rest against the middle of his stomach. Pavel was completely silent but Hikaru could feel his shoulders going tense under his hands. 

“Hey,” he said, and Pavel didn’t respond, only wrapped his arms around Hikaru’s waist. 

“Are you okay,” he said again. 

Pavel let out another exhale, the kind of slow and shaking breath that made it clear he was trying not to cry. He shook his head just a little bit and backed up. 

“Yes I--I’m sorry.” Pavel rubbed his eyes, sitting back on his heels and Hikaru didn’t like the way it made him break away from his touch. “I’m sorry. I ruined it.”

“It’s okay. Hey.” Hikaru knelt down in front of him. “You didn’t ruin anything.”

“I did, god--” Pavel’s voice cut off. He took another deep, shaky breath and Hikaru wanted to pull his hands away from his eyes but he worried that if he did Pavel would be crying underneath. 

“We were supposed to have sex,” Pavel groaned. 

“Can you move your hands--”

“And now the first time I’m taking your clothes off this is the reaction you see from me, I’m sorry.”

Hikaru actually laughed at that, but Pavel was still covering his face and finally he had had enough of it and just reached forward and pulled his hands down. He wasn’t crying, at least, but his eyes were red-rimmed and watery and his face was getting flushed a little bit like it did when he felt really upset. Hikaru rested his hand against the curve of his cheek and he turned his face away.

“Come on. I’m not that ugly, am I.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Then tell me what it actually is.”

“It’s just that--” Pavel sighed. Hikaru brushed his thumb along the line of his cheekbone and caught a tear that slipped out when Pavel looked back at him. 

“It’s okay,” he said again, quieter. 

“I don’t know why I feel so bad when I see them.”

“You shouldn’t. I was the one stupid enough to get my ass kicked.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Pavel snapped, and it shocked Hikaru enough that his hand dropped down from Pavel’s face. 

“What, do you think it was your fault?”

“I shouldn’t have let you go over there alone. I could have gone with you and maybe then--”

“Then what? You could’ve been shot down too? You don’t know what would have happened if you were there. It could have been worse.”

Pavel huffed. He rubbed the tears out of his eyes and stared down at his lap. 

“I lived, okay.” Hikaru took Pavel’s face in his hands again, lifting his chin up even though it only hurt to see him like this, tears running down over his blotchy, red cheeks. “I lived and it doesn’t matter anymore what happened because I’m still here.”

“It’s just that every time I see you without a shirt I feel so mad at myself,” Pavel whispered. 

“I can keep my shirt on while we have sex, if you want.”

Pavel cringed at him, which was actually better than crying, if Hikaru was being completely honest. He felt himself smiling a little bit. 

“That would be so,  _ so _ weird for you to do.”

Hikaru laughed. He leaned forward and kissed Pavel on his stupid, sarcastic mouth. 

“Then can you stop seeing them as a reminder of the time I almost died.”

“What else would they remind me of.”

Hikaru pressed their foreheads together, one of his hands sliding to the back of Pavel’s neck. He thought for a second, and he realized what he could say, and he knew it would just be the cheesiest thing ever. And if he said it out loud maybe Pavel would come up with another sarcastic response. That was half of the reason he decided to say it, what his scars _ should _ remind Pavel of, 

“The time you saved my life.”

Pavel snorted just a little bit. 

“You are so sentimental.”


	30. chapter thirty: year eight

Hikaru ran out of cocoa butter to put on his scars and decided to just go to sickbay and ask for some, because Christine had told him how to replicate it but he’d long since forgotten. So he took the empty container with him and hoped that Christine was there and that she would put up with his forgetfulness and just replicate some more. He could already imagine it, instead of the  _ I’m not a counselor _ line it would become the _ you know you could just do this yourself _ line. 

“You know, I gave you the replicator instructions to just do this yourself,” she said, taking the empty can from him. Hikaru smiled and shook his head, and followed her through the sickbay so she could refill it for him. 

He watched her do it, this time trying just a little bit harder to pay attention to the replicator settings. 

“Is there anything you’ve been needing to talk about lately?” Christine asked while they both watched the replicator work. 

“I thought you weren’t a licensed counselor.”

“I do have a license, it’s just not my job.”

Hikaru turned to her, raising an eyebrow. She gave him a look that somehow combined both sympathy and irritation. He wondered which one of them had mastered that look first: Nurse Chapel or Doctor McCoy. 

“I made an exception for you,” she justified, “Anyway, is there anything?”

“Not really. I’ve been doing good, I think.”

“No more nightmares?”

“I mean, they happen sometimes, still, but not a lot.”

She nodded. The replicator finished up and the little aluminum container was filled again with cocoa butter. Christine reached for it and screwed the cap on, and then handed it over to Hikaru. 

“That’s normal. It’s still only been a few months since the accident. Honestly a lot of people in your place would still be struggling every night. You’re taking good care of yourself.”

Hikaru cradled the cocoa butter against his chest. He realized it was maybe the first time anyone said something like that about his progress. He was surprised how strongly he felt himself react to that, to the idea that people around him actually believed he was doing a good job. He tried to keep his facial expression from revealing too much but he did give Christine a small smile. She smiled back, some of the mid-shift annoyance fading from her demeanor. 

“Any pain at all?”

“Not really. My back gets sore from work but I think that might have happened before.” 

She thought about it for a second. 

“Your muscles could be compensating a little bit, still. But it doesn’t sound like we should be worried.”

Hikaru was about to nod to that and take his cue to leave, when Christine asked, in the middle of sickbay, standing in front of the replicator with people passing by every few seconds, 

“When did you get together with Chekov?”

Hikaru froze, and opened his mouth to ask something along the lines of  _ what are you talking about _ or maybe  _ how did you know _ when she gave him a look to the equivalent of  _ oh honey _ , tilting her head to the side and placing one hand on her hip. With her free hand she pointed to her neck, and it was only then that Hikaru remembered last night, when Pavel’s mouth was on his neck, that he might have left a mark. In the mirror this morning his undershirt must have been covering it up just enough that he didn’t realize it was there. 

He instinctively slapped his hand over his neck and Christine looked like she was biting back a laugh. 

“It’s good. I’m glad,” she said, and then before she turned around towards her office she added, “It took you two long enough.”

Hikaru watched her walk away, still covering his neck with one hand, and felt oddly relieved. Like he came down here and got way more of what he needed than just the cocoa butter. 

 

-

 

After his trip to sickbay Hikaru went back to his quarters, stopped to take a look at the hickey on his neck, and then decided to hell with it and went to go work in the greenhouse without even worrying if the neckline of his shirt slid back down while he walked. It was their day off of that week, so it wasn’t like he was going to have to sit through an entire shift under the harsh lights of the bridge where the Captain and whoever else would eventually notice it. 

Pavel showed up at the greenhouse, too, like clockwork, after he finished at the gym. He had been coming every week now, even after the awkward run-in with Captain Kirk that one time. Every once in a while it would actually start to look like Pavel wasn’t just there to be with Hikaru, like he was actually starting to get into  _ gardening _ . But it didn’t happen that often. This time he made it clear right off the bat that he was not there to look at plants. It was clear as soon as he walked in, made long strides across the room, and crowded Hikaru against the rosebush planter. 

“Did you have a good workout?” Hikaru asked--mumbled, more like--against Pavel’s mouth. 

“I’m horny,” was his response. Hikaru smiled and leaned against the edge of the planter, pulling Pavel in between his legs. 

“I can tell.”

Pavel smiled into the kiss, and then brought his hand to the back of Hikaru’s neck to pull him closer into the warmth of his mouth. Hikaru wrestled out of his gardening gloves, just barely managing to multitask while Pavel kept distracting him, with his tongue, his hand tightening in the hair on the back of his neck, his teeth biting at his bottom lip. Once the gloves were finally off Hikaru’s hands were slipping underneath Pavel’s shirts, touching the soft skin, still warm from his shower after the gym. 

A few more minutes went by just like this, pushing and pulling and holding their bodies together as if it was possible to get any closer, possible for Hikaru to be any more pressed up against the planter. Hikaru slid his hands down to the curve of Pavel’s ass, and Pavel let out a little breathy moan which must have been the sexiest noise Hikaru had ever heard in his life. Hikaru pulled him closer, against the hardness between his legs, and Pavel let out another gasp, crashing their mouths together again. He wrapped his arms around Hikaru’s shoulders, and then,

“Ow, fuck.”

Pavel jerked back, and Hikaru was stunned for a second, wondering what the hell he could have done to elicit that response, when he saw Pavel pull his hand back from where it was around Hikaru’s shoulder, holding it up between them. He was bleeding. 

“Rosebush. I should have warned you.”

Hikaru stroked his hand softly along Pavel’s hip, underneath his shirt and over his slacks. Pavel squinted at the cut on the back of his index finger. It really wasn’t too bad, just a scratch from one of the thorns, but still enough to interrupt their makeout session. 

“I knew they were roses,” Pavel sighed, “But I saw them and thought it was romantic, to kiss you here.”

He pouted a little bit and Hikaru just breathed out a laugh, wrapping his hand around Pavel’s waist and urging him closer. His other hand found Pavel’s cheek and pulled him forward to plant a kiss on his cheekbone. 

“I’m sorry we haven’t really had sex yet,” Pavel said quietly, still looking down at his finger. His eyelashes were dark against the subtle pink of his cheeks.  _ Rosy cheeks _ , Hikaru thought, and almost laughed again. 

“Well it’s not like there’s a deadline or something,” he replied, and he wasn’t sure why Pavel had felt the need to bring it up like this. It hadn’t even been a week since that night in the observation deck, and then in the turbolift, when they finally admitted they wanted each other. It wasn’t like they had some sort of limited time frame for having sex. They had waited this long already, anyway. “I’m not in a hurry.”

“I am,” Pavel deadpanned, “I feel like I’ve been thinking about this for forever.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Pavel’s eyes looked up from the cut on his finger, piercing right through Hikaru’s. Pavel always had a strong gaze, and he had this ability to somehow communicate his feelings with it, too, every time. Hikaru took a deep breath, steadying himself under those intense blue eyes.  

“What have you been thinking about?”

Pavel’s blush darkened. 

“You talk so much,” he said, and shook his head a little bit as if he wasn’t so clearly turned on by Hikaru asking to hear his sex fantasies out loud. 

“I have a lot of questions,” Hikaru said. He watched Pavel squirm a little bit more, biting his bottom lip, and realized that maybe Pavel found it more difficult to answer those kinds of questions when they weren’t in bed, and in the dark. Standing in the greenhouse, only partly hidden behind a few rows of planters, where the door would open for anyone who might decide to come in, this was bordering on PDA. Hikaru felt a shiver run up his spine from the thought of it. Of course he would stop and they would separate and they would go back to their quarters, if Pavel wasn’t into it. But first…

Hikaru took hold of Pavel’s hand between them, the one with the injured finger. Pavel’s gaze was locked on him as he lifted his hand, turning it just a little, and pressed his lips over the small cut. He saw Pavel’s eyes widen, and smiled, and kissed it again. 

“Do you think about doing things with me in here?” He asked quietly, as if he didn’t know they were alone. “In between the rose bushes and the Ktarian Ivy?”

“Hearing you say plant names really should not be turning me on,” Pavel nearly whined, but he was moving back into Hikaru’s space, in between his legs. He turned his hand like he might move it away, and Hikaru took the opportunity to kiss the surface of his palm, the pad of his thumb as it came to rest on his bottom lip. 

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” Pavel finally breathed, watching closely as Hikaru opened his mouth just slightly, allowed him to press his thumb against his lip and then inside, just barely dipping into his mouth. “I’ve thought about it.”

“That day when I was in here, and you helped me with the cactus,” Pavel continued, maybe to keep Hikaru from saying something while the pad of his thumb rested against his tongue. “When you stood behind me to put it in the new pot, all I could think about was your body pressed against mine. I wanted you so bad.”

“How could I not have noticed that.”

Pavel moved his thumb, slid his hand to the back of Hikaru’s neck, a little more careful this time of the rosebush behind him. 

“After what happened just a few minutes before that, I really had to try to be careful.”

Hikaru smiled, and Pavel finally closed the last little bit of distance between them and kissed him again. This time he wasn’t so urgent, maybe because he was afraid of getting cut again, but he still worked Hikaru’s mouth open and ground their hips together and broke off to make those sweet little moans. Hikaru took Pavel’s hands in his own. 

“Are you worried you’re gonna cut yourself again?”

“Maybe.”

He kissed Pavel’s knuckles, and then the finger with the cut again, and brought his hands to rest against the front of his chest, wrapping his arms around his back, and finally kissed Pavel on the lips. 

“We can leave, if you want,” he said, and was barely able to finish when Pavel chased after his mouth almost as soon as he had broken the kiss. Pavel fisted his hands in the fabric covering Hikaru’s shirt, and that urgent, desperate mouth was back and opening up against his. 

“No,” he breathed, “right here.”

Hikaru was about to ask what  _ right here _ meant, and then Pavel let go of his shirt, palms spreading out against his chest. His hands slid down, down the line of his torso, and then slipped under his uniform shirt and worked his pants open. Hikaru’s heart stopped for a few seconds, and then it was back and pounding in his ears as he watched Pavel take his cock out into his hand and sink to his knees. 

The first, tentative stripe of Pavel’s tongue along the line of his cock already felt better than he could have imagined. It was better than any of his fantasies, because it was real. Pavel was real and he was wrapping his mouth around Hikaru’s dick and looking up at him through his lashes like he knew  _ exactly _ how sexy he was. Hikaru risked sinking his fingers into the curls on the top of his head, and Pavel hummed in encouragement, sending vibrations around his cock that drove Hikaru absolutely crazy. He tightened his grip in Pavel’s hair and let his own head fall back, brushing against the roses. Pavel pulled back a little.

“You have to keep watch,” he said, and already his voice was rougher and lower and actually there was no way he knew how sexy he was like this. Otherwise he would really be unstoppable. 

Hikaru snapped his head back up, looked down at Pavel, at his wide blue eyes, his flushed cheeks, his mouth shiny with spit and so close to his dick that just the image of it was almost too much. He nodded, and looked up across the greenhouse to watch the door. 

“And what am I supposed to do if someone comes in?” He asked, voice tight as Pavel wrapped his mouth around him again. Pavel grunted something and as much as Hikaru wondered what he had meant to say he really wasn’t going to ask any more questions that might make Pavel  _ stop _ . His mouth was so hot, and perfect, and the way he hollowed his cheeks as he moved up and down Hikaru’s cock was straight up sinful. Hikaru realized he was accidentally watching Pavel again--because of course he was, how could he  _ not _ \--and begrudgingly tried to focus on the door. 

He tightened his hand in Pavel’s hair, and Pavel nodded his head up and down a little, possibly suggesting that it was okay if Hikaru pulled it. So he did, and it made Pavel moan around his cock and Hikaru could hardly choke back the noise he made in response. It only took a few more minutes of that, of Hikaru pulling Pavel’s hair while Pavel moaned and sucked him until he was coming. Pavel’s mouth stayed on him while he did, working him to the point of oversensitivity, until Hikaru shivered and had to pull Pavel off. He opened his eyes. He’d barely even been able to keep them open and watching the door in the past minutes, but he was pretty sure nobody had come in. Pretty sure. 

He looked down at Pavel, still on his knees in front of him, and when Pavel tilted his face upwards and he could see his mouth, lips red and swollen, his face dripping, again, with just a little bit of the come that he had swallowed a second ago, he knew he was going to be hard again in minutes, probably, just remembering how Pavel looked in that moment. 

Once he was sure the image was burned into his mind, he pulled Pavel to his feet, kissed his perfect mouth, and told him it was his turn to watch the door. 


	31. chapter thirty one: year eight

After what happened in the greenhouse it was like suddenly nothing could stop the two of them from touching each other. They practically repeated that scene again in the turbolift, and then in the corridor with Pavel pressed against the wall just a few meters outside of Hikaru’s quarters, until finally Hikaru dragged him through the door and towards the bed. He wasn’t sure where this feeling was hiding all this time, this need to have Pavel naked, to touch him everywhere, to keep him in his bed for as long as humanly possible, but he wasn’t going to question it. 

Apparently, neither was Pavel. He laughed as they landed in a pile on Hikaru’s bed, eagerly tearing at his clothes and then at Hikaru’s. They held each other and kissed each other and rutted against each other with no sense of rhythm or even conscious thought about what they were doing. It must have all been instinct at that point. Instinct driving Hikaru to map out every single inch of Pavel’s beautiful skin, every line of his body, every single detail about him. He wanted to hear every different kind of sound Pavel would make as he touched him, every shortened breath and moan and sigh that came from his lips. He wanted this to last forever. 

Pavel came for the second time in Hikaru’s hand, so fast that he almost looked apologetic, but Hikaru didn’t care. He wasn’t even thinking about his own erection as he kissed and touched and held Pavel, and then Pavel took his hand and guided it around to the curve of his ass and then lower, between his legs, and Hikaru couldn’t think at all. He watched the subtle changes in Pavel’s face as they both stretched him open, watched his mouth form around almost silent gasps and his eyebrows knit together in concentration. Everything was so new that it was impossible to hold onto every detail of it, but he tried. He tried as hard as he could to remember all of it. 

Like the way Pavel’s head fell back into the pillows so gracefully, exposing the line of his neck, and Hikaru would worry that it was too much for him if Pavel hadn’t wrapped his legs so tightly around his waist, willing him to push in deeper. Pavel felt so good that it was a miracle, really, that Hikaru didn’t come as soon as he was inside of him. He tried to stay as slow as possible, at first, and focused on that line of his neck, from the underside of Pavel’s chin, to the center of his chest, where his heart was beating so fast. The movement of his adam’s apple, the small, desperate noises coming from his mouth. Hikaru found his hands fisting in the bedsheets and covered them with his own, watched Pavel smile underneath him, even with his eyes screwed shut against the intensity of it, and then lace their fingers together. 

When Pavel finally asked him to go faster Hikaru knew this wasn’t going to last long, but it didn’t matter. They would have countless more opportunities to do this, and to do everything. That thought alone, that Hikaru would get to see this side of Pavel, to touch him like this, to watch him fall apart underneath him, any and every time they wanted, from now on, was almost enough to bring tears to his eyes. He leaned down, pressing their chests together and fitting his face into the curve of Pavel’s neck, and felt Pavel’s arms wrap tightly around his back. He came like this, held in Pavel’s arms, and only realized afterwards how much he had needed that ever since he woke up in sickbay months ago. 

 

-

 

Hikaru scrambled for his PADD as the tone played out for an incoming video call, and he was about to answer it when he remembered that he was completely naked. His finger was over the call button as he debated how weird it would be to answer a video call shirtless. From Aiko. 

Okay. Maybe too weird. 

“Are you going to answer that?” Pavel came out of the bathroom and leaned against the doorway, toothbrush in one hand. 

“Yeah. Can you throw me a shirt.”

Pavel blinked at him. The ringtone kept going. 

“Or you could walk four steps and get one.”

Hikaru sighed audibly and climbed out of bed to his dresser, leaving his PADD still ringing on his bedside table. Pavel smiled and stuck the toothbrush in his mouth, watching him the whole time. He really could have just gotten Hikaru a shirt. The bed and the dresser weren’t that far from each other, but standing in the doorway of the bathroom, Pavel barely would have had to move. Hikaru was pretty sure he just wanted to ogle him like a creep while he walked naked across the room. 

He finally pulled a t shirt over his head and he was right, Pavel was staring at him while he stood there and brushed his teeth. Hikaru pulled on a pair of boxer shorts just because having only a shirt seemed weird, and then Pavel turned around to spit toothpaste in the sink so he could ask,

“Do you need to be fully clothed to answer the phone?”

Speaking of phone, his PADD was still ringing. Aiko must be calling him for the second time. So she would already be annoyed. Hikaru risked it and stepped forward to kiss Pavel’s toothpaste flavored mouth, quickly, before he hurried back over to the bed to answer the call. 

“Took you long enough,” Aiko deadpanned.

“Did you want me to answer the call naked?” Hikaru asked, and glanced over at Pavel still grinning at him from the doorway. He finally stuck his toothbrush in his mouth and went back into the bathroom to finish brushing his teeth. 

“Okay. Gross. I did not ask.”

“Anyway,” Aiko started. Hikaru could see from the tapestry behind her that Aiko was calling from the guest room in Yuki’s apartment in Berkeley. “Yuki had the baby.”

“I know. She already sent me like 20 pictures of the baby.”

“She had the baby??” Pavel yelled from the bathroom. 

“Yes!” Aiko yelled back, and Hikaru cringed and had to hold the PADD away from his face at the sheer volume of the two of them trying to have a conversation. 

“God, just come out here if you want to join the call, Pavel.”

“In a minute,” Pavel said, a little quieter this time, sounding like he was still brushing his teeth. Hikaru looked back at the screen and Aiko had just been watching him, looking somewhat amused. So far in this call already Hikaru had mentioned that he was naked a second ago, Pavel had made his presence known in the room, and Hikaru had nagged at him like they were an old married couple. As much as he wanted to remind Pavel to put a shirt on before he most likely  _ joined him on the bed _ to talk to Aiko, that would have really solidified any suspicions Aiko already had. 

It wasn’t like they were keeping this a secret, Hikaru just hadn’t figured out yet exactly how he planned on breaking the news. And now that Yuki had just had her baby it definitely wasn’t the right time. Hikaru was the youngest child, after all, and he lived on a spaceship far from home, so it was pretty likely that the news of his relationship with Pavel was going to immediately overshadow whatever excitement had finally developed in the life of his older sister, the middle child. If he took attention away from her having a  _ literal _ baby with the news that him and Pavel were together, which he was sure they were all anticipating, at this point, she would never let him hear the end of it.

“Where is Yuki? How is she?” Pavel asked as he climbed into bed next to Hikaru, after--thank god--putting a shirt on. 

“She’s good. She’s sleeping. The baby woke us up like five times last night.”

Aiko definitely looked tired enough to have been woken up five times in one night by a newborn baby. Part of it might have been that she wasn’t in her Starfleet uniform, because seeing her in pajamas with her hair undone was a little bit strange at this point, but her eyes were tired even as she talked about how cute the baby was, how happy Yuki looked in the hospital yesterday, and how insanely over the top the entire family was being to the point where Victoria had started hiding from their relatives when somebody came over with yet  _ another _ home cooked meal. Pavel and Hikaru laughed at that last part, because of course the entire Sulu tribe was showing up at Yuki and Victoria’s doorstep at every possible moment. 

“I would hide too, I think,” Pavel said, and Hikaru snorted.

“You’ve never had to hide from my family and you’ve known them longer than she has.”

Pavel looked at him sideways. 

“Trust me, I’ve had the thought.”

“Well the good news is that by the time you guys get here on shore leave everyone will have gotten tired of making the trip and Yuki will be desperate for attention again.”

“Sounds about right,” Hikaru said. 

“Are you going to spend the whole two weeks here?”

“I don’t know. I mean they kind of scheduled this one just for me to go home. I don’t know if I’m allowed to use the opportunity for a vacation.”

The call was immediately interrupted by the sound of crying, and Hikaru could see Aiko ever so slightly wince at what must be turning into a familiar noise over there. 

“Yeah, you won’t get a vacation over here, that’s for sure,” she said, and she was definitely at least partially making a joke.

“It might be good for you, though, to go somewhere else for a few days. Before you come here to drown in family activities.”

Aiko kind of had a point.

“She has a point,” Pavel said, and Hikaru turned to look at him. The temptation to kiss him again was so strong that he forced himself to turn back to his PADD, where Aiko was ever so patiently waiting for them to finish with their loving stares and continue having a conversation. 

“I’ll think about it.”

 

-

 

“I can take you to Russia,” Pavel said, long after they had hung up the call with Aiko and gotten in bed to sleep. Pavel was spread out over him, head resting on the center of his chest, where his heartbeat was. “Just for a few days. Before we go to see your family.”

“You want to?”

Pavel was silent for a few minutes, thinking about it. Probably still debating the idea with himself. Hikaru knew how big of a deal this would be, if they went. It would bring out in the open all of the pieces of Pavel’s past that he had never talked about before. All the things that Hikaru could tell he intentionally kept under lock and key. He wanted to know them, of course. He wanted to know everything about Pavel. But he wasn’t going to push it, to use the  _ I almost died _ card and make Pavel feel like he was obligated to take him there when he didn’t feel ready yet. He could wait until Pavel was ready. So while Pavel quietly thought about his answer, Hikaru just lazily ran his fingers through his hair and accepted that Pavel might not actually have an answer yet, and that was okay. 

Finally Pavel spoke. 

“I want to show you.”

“You don’t have to, you know.”

“I know. But I want to.” Pavel pushed himself up on one arm, over Hikaru, and leaned his head down to press their mouths together. 

“But only for a few days,” Pavel reiterated. 

“We can’t stay that long, anyway, we have baby duty.”

Pavel smiled against his mouth, brought one hand to Hikaru’s cheek and deepened the kiss. 


	32. chapter thirty two: year eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this totally was not necessary but here we are i decided to give pavel a full-on backstory, because i spent hours on memory alpha AND memory beta writing this and realized that he really doesn't have one. so i made some stuff up
> 
> welcome to russia

For all of the references Pavel made to Russia and to his Russian heritage, he never really talked about  _ where _ he actually came from. Hikaru was convinced that he was the only one who even knew he was from St. Petersburg. Everyone else in the crew seemed to have fun speculating. Hikaru had heard it all. Pavel Andreievich Chekov was the youngest child from a huge family who lived in a small Siberian fishing village along the Taiga river. Or he was Moscow’s best kept secret who was conscripted by the government for his intellect until he finally ran away in the dark of the night to move to San Francisco. Or he was left in a basket as a baby, at the door of the Russian Space Academy, and after moving through the ranks, finally got bored of the place by age fifteen and joined Starfleet. Or he was Russian-American, and just didn’t want anyone to know about the second part. Or he wasn’t even Russian. There was apparently a Polish guy in Engineering who was convinced that Pavel was Polish and wouldn’t stop telling people about it. 

Both Pavel and Hikaru found it hilarious, and decided that they weren’t going to ruin it for anyone. On the airplane Hikaru agreed to keep details of the trip to himself. 

“Just answer very vaguely to whatever they ask you,” Pavel said.

“I was thinking I would change my answers for everyone who asks.”

Pavel thought about that for a minute. 

“No, that’s not a good idea.” He rested one elbow on the tray table, propping his chin up with his hand. “You would inevitably tell someone something real, I think.”

“You think so?”

“You’re not a very good liar. It would be safer if you just try to lie by omission.”

Hikaru rolled his eyes, but Pavel was probably right.

 

-

 

Hikaru’s own expectations had been pretty vague, but formed over such a long period of time that it was surprising to find out what Pavel’s background actually was. This whole time he’d expected that such a child prodigy of the sciences as Pavel was, his parents had to be scientists themselves, or engineers, or space travelers, or something like that. It would only make sense. Otherwise getting into the Russian Space Academy at just thirteen would have been an incredible task, without any connection to the institute.

It turned out neither of them were a part of that world at all. Andrei and Larisa Chekov were members of St. Petersburg intelligentsia. Academics. Professors. His mother had PhDs in philosophy, sociology, and psychology, and his father in literature and cultural studies. He knew the afternoon was going to be weird as soon as they got to their house, when Pavel’s parents opened the door and his mother gave him a very awkward and strangely loose hug and his father only spoke a few words in greeting. All Hikaru could think was  _ haven’t these people been away from their son for three years, now? _ It made him kind of sad. He was going to have to remember this moment when they got back to San Francisco and he was overwhelmed, constantly, by the sheer level of affection coming from his own family. Pavel looked unbothered, though, by his parents acting distant, like he’d long stopped hoping for anything else. He seemed to sense how dismayed Hikaru was already, by their cold greeting and Pavel’s acceptance of it, and he shrugged. 

“It’s normal for them,” he whispered as they went inside. 

What made it more eerie was that Pavel really didn’t look like his parents. The few similarities between them could have been consequential: his father’s height, his mother’s small frame, his father’s cheekbones and the color of his mother’s hair. Maybe if they acted like they were family the resemblance would have been a bit stronger, Hikaru thought. 

Hikaru had apparently also been subconsciously expecting the Chekov house to look like some sort of science laboratory on the inside, but that was before he knew that Pavel’s parents weren’t actually scientists. So when he walked inside and found that it was basically a library, it kind of made sense, all things considered. Both Andrei and Larisa were dressed like librarians, too, Andrei with his tweed jacket with elbow patches and Larisa in a long shawl that wrapped around her shoulders multiple times. So Pavel’s parents didn’t really seem like they could be his parents and his house definitely didn’t look like the place he had grown up in. The air smelled like old paper books and the floors were covered in thick, ornate rugs and every available surface had some sort of knick knack on it. Hikaru really couldn’t imagine Pavel in a place like this. At least in the living room, he couldn’t find a single electronic device. The room was so cluttered he couldn’t even spot a power outlet. 

“Sit down,” his mother smiled at them, and it looked only a little bit like she might have rehearsed for this, “I’ll make tea for us.”

Pavel sat down heavily into the old leather couch in the living room, leaning back against the cushions. Hikaru watched as his father settled into an overstuffed chair on the other side of the coffee table and he carefully made his way to sit next to Pavel, trying his best not to disrupt the couch cushions too much when he sat down. 

Pavel gave him a look like  _ why are you acting so weird _ and before Hikaru could figure out what the best response would be to that, other than gesturing to the whole situation they were in the middle of, his father, Andrei, spoke up. 

“So, your five year mission is almost over,” he said, and his voice didn’t even sound like Pavel’s. It was lower and drier and if Hikaru didn’t know that he was Russian he wouldn’t have been able to pin down his accent when he spoke English. 

“Yes,” Pavel answered simply, picking at a crack in the leather covering the armrest. 

“And did you have a good time?”

It was weird. The tone of Andrei’s voice as he asked about their careers working on a spaceship. It sounded more like he was asking them how they were enjoying summer camp or some shit. 

Usually Pavel loved talking about their mission, about the Enterprise, about working as a navigator. He would talk the ear off of anyone who would listen, whether or not they were interested, and whether or not they already knew everything he was saying, in Hikaru’s case. But it was like his excitement for that topic was nonexistent as soon as his father asked about it from across the room. 

“I like the work,” was all Pavel said. 

Hikaru didn’t know why he felt like he had the responsibility of saving this completely apathetic and infuriating conversation that they were having about Pavel’s life passion. 

“Pavel was promoted a few months ago.” As soon as he said it he saw Pavel tense up just slightly next to him, and then he went back to acting nonchalant, fidgeting with the leather on the couch. 

“Ah,” his dark eyebrows rose just a little bit, maybe even a hint of a smile, “Did you hear that, darling? Pavel was promoted.”

Larisa came back from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a tea set and a plate of cookies, still giving her son that same, slightly-rehearsed looking smile, but this time it seemed bigger in response to the news. She set the tray down on the coffee table and poured tea for them, immediately adding sugar and milk into Pavel’s. Pavel didn’t drink his tea with sugar anymore. But he didn’t say anything.

“Well we heard great news from the University this month,” Larisa said, passing a small teacup to Hikaru next. “Your father was awarded another research grant by the Ministry of Culture.”

“Oh, really?” Pavel asked, and Hikaru knew from his tone of voice that he absolutely did not care at all. Based on his parents’ own excitement over it, even if they could tell that Pavel didn’t care, it wasn’t important. His father was actually, smiling, now, compared to a minute ago when they were talking about their five year mission.

“And the renovation of the University library has finally been completed, after the collection was expanded,” he said, “we thought we would celebrate both this Monday, in the evening. Have a little event.”

Pavel nodded, sipping his tea with sugar in it. 

“At the library, of course. And it will be a big group with all of the faculty and the cultural studies institute.” Larisa folded her hands neatly in her lap, leaned forward to where Pavel and Hikaru sat on the couch. “You boys should come.”

“That’s a wonderful idea.” Andrei said, and Hikaru really had no idea what the changing tones of his voice meant. His accent sounded so vaguely foreign, so perfectly crafted, that everything out of his mouth could have been fake. 

Of course when Pavel agreed to come, Hikaru knew exactly how he felt underneath his words, could hear in his voice that he was already dreading it. He tried to remain as neutral as possible as he watched these three people, who might as well be complete strangers, lie to each other over tea. 

 

-

 

Pavel showed Hikaru his old bedroom, which, based on everything until that point, was surprisingly still intact. Hikaru would have expected his parents to have turned it into a storage room, or a third home office, or something like that. Instead it must have been exactly as Pavel left it when he’d first gone to the Russian Space Academy at thirteen years old. 

It was cluttered like the living room downstairs, decorated in the same chaotic fashion, but on a completely different theme. Star charts and star system maps covered the walls and overlapped with each other. Books were piled high on his desk and crammed into shelves, bookmarks and papers spilling out of them. Only two surfaces looked remotely organized, like someone had put thought into where things went. One shelf had a series of spaceship models, probably all Russian-made ships. Hikaru recognized at the very end, a tiny model of Sputnik. It made him smile to imagine Pavel building it, once upon a time. Another shelf, opposite from Pavel’s old desk like he didn’t want to worry about looking at it by accident, held trophies and a few picture frames. Hikaru crossed the room to look at it.

The trophies were probably from chess competitions and science fairs, judging by the shapes. Hikaru couldn’t read the inscriptions on them, save for the stardate in Roman numerals and the inscription of Pavel’s name, which was the only word in cyrillic that he knew. The photos seemed to correspond with some of the awards: Pavel, at various ages, standing with a too-big trophy in his arms and staring at the camera, sometimes flanked by one or two parents. Even in the photo where Pavel looked the youngest, where he couldn’t have been older than five or six, he wasn’t smiling. 

Pavel had sat down on the bed while Hikaru snooped. Finally Hikaru joined him, sitting just close enough that their thighs touched. He must have been watching Hikaru go around his room, anticipating the conclusions that he would come to as he went from star charts and Sputnik models to unhappy childhood photos. Hikaru didn’t even know what to say, except for  _ I’m sorry _ , and he knew Pavel wouldn’t want to hear that. 

“I was an accident, I think,” Pavel said, voice all but devoid of emotion, “I’m convinced of it. I don’t think they wanted to have a child.”

Hikaru could see where he got that idea from. The two of them didn’t exactly act like Pavel’s absence was any sort of hardship in their lives. A part of him of course wanted to protest, to quash the idea that Pavel was ever unwanted, but he knew that would interfere with what Pavel wanted-- _ needed _ to say, to get off of his chest. 

“But when I was born I guess they saw me as some grand experiment. All of their colleagues were having children, and they wanted me to be the best of them. I don’t think there was ever a day in my childhood when I did not study.”

Hikaru could imagine that being true, too. 

His room definitely showed passion, and interest, and devotion to his studies, but there was hardly space for anything else. Just the fact that Pavel evidently packed almost nothing from this room when he moved from St. Petersburg all the way to San Francisco proved that he barely made any good memories here. 

Hikaru didn’t realize it until he was sitting on Pavel’s bed, glancing back at the shelf with the photos on it, that he hadn’t seen a single picture of Pavel in the rest of the house. 

“I think they were always disappointed with me.” Pavel’s voice was quieter this time. He stared down at his hands in his lap, twisting together like he was trying to combine them into one. “Even before I left the Space Academy and went to Starfleet.”

“How could they possibly be disappointed in you,” Hikaru asked, and he knew how, he knew exactly how, because he had met Pavel’s parents now and he was in their house and honestly it wouldn’t surprise him, but he still couldn’t believe that anyone in their right mind would ever be disappointed with Pavel.

“I am good at science but I never fit into their world. I never said the right thing. I never...sounded right. I remember sitting on the stairs at night when I was in primary school and hearing them talk in the kitchen about hiring an accent coach for me.”

“An accent coach,” he repeated. 

“Yes. They don’t like how Russian I sound. Even though I am Russian, from Russia. I think I embarrassed them, at their special events, because I sound so uneducated when I speak English.”

“That’s not true.”

Pavel looked over at him, smiling a little bit even though the feeling wasn’t there in his eyes.

“When I met you for the first time, I was so afraid that as soon as you heard my English you would make fun of me. The way they would talk about my accent--I never thought anyone would take me seriously.”

Hikaru couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He could hardly think at all, against the anger rising in his chest. His hands clenched into fists in his lap as he tried to hold himself together, and Pavel seemed to sense it. Pavel’s face softened, and there was something in his eyes, now, something Hikaru hadn’t seen since they were alone together at the hotel this morning.

“But you never made fun of me,” Pavel said clearly, reaching out to hold Hikaru’s wrist as his voice chipped away at the anger in his heart. “And you cared about me, even though you didn’t have to. Before I met you I never believed anyone like you could care about me.”

The anger Hikaru felt was replaced almost too quickly with something like heartbreak, for fifteen year old Pavel who must have felt so lost and unwanted and alone, who showed up in Hikaru’s life with his striped socks and his soldering iron. With his wild emotions and insecurity and complete lack of self control. And his hawaiian shirts and sense of humor and mischievous little grin every time he broke the rules. His total honesty about who he was, as if he didn’t even care what anyone thought. 

“You changed my life, Hikaru,” he said, voice shaking just a little bit, and Hikaru unclenched his hands and took hold of Pavel’s, weaving their fingers together. 

“You changed mine, too.”

 

-

 

At first, when Hikaru got back from his run, it seemed like Pavel must have left the hotel. He walked in the room and didn’t see him in bed, or spread out on the couch watching TV, and he couldn’t make out his silhouette through the curtains covering the balcony. Hikaru tried not to let that worry him, since Pavel could have stepped out for any reason, this was his hometown, anyway, but he remembered his suspicions earlier that Pavel wasn’t feeling so good after their trip to his parents’ house. 

Hikaru kicked his shoes off and set his windbreaker over the couch and went in to shower.

And there was Pavel, sitting in the bathtub with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the tiles of the shower wall and apparently doing nothing else. His hair wasn’t even wet. There were still curls of steam coming off of the water, otherwise Hikaru would have assumed Pavel had been in there since he had first left more than an hour ago. Pavel saw him and his arms loosened a little, the wrinkle in between his eyebrows smoothing out once he knew Hikaru had come in and seen him looking so upset.

“Oh, sorry. I was going to get out before you came back.”

“It’s okay.” Hikaru came in and sat down on the bathroom floor next to the tub. He wanted to laugh at the sight of Pavel sitting in the bathtub, which was something he had never actually seen before, and he had never considered the image of his long legs taking up the entire length of the bathtub like they did, even as they were bent slightly at the knees. The steam made his skin flush across his chest and the tips of his shoulders, the lines of his cheeks. He didn’t laugh, though, he just smiled and leaned his arms over the edge of the bathtub. 

“How was your run?” Pavel asked. 

“Good. I found a lot of stairs.”

“Did you get lost?”

“Not too many times,” Hikaru drawled, still feeling tired from their trip here, and their afternoon with Mr. and Mrs. Chekov, and now from his run, and the warm air in the bathroom only made him more sleepy as he leaned against the bathtub. “Are you okay?”

Pavel watched him for a moment, and then looked back down at the water, shaking his head and smiling a little bit like he thought it was dumb, that he felt sad. Like he didn’t think he was allowed to.   
“I didn’t want you to see that. Today.”

“You know I was going to have to meet them eventually.”

“Did you really have to, though? Because that’s what I’m wondering now.”

Hikaru trailed his fingertips along the curve of Pavel’s elbow, the closest part of him that was within reach. 

“I don’t like feeling like there are things I don’t know about you,” he said quietly, tracing circles into his forearm. 

“I guess I didn’t want you to know this part.”

“Why not.” Hikaru was pretty sure he could guess why, and he was pretty sure it had something to do with the noticeable differences between Pavel’s experience with Hikaru’s family and Hikaru’s experience today.

“Because I look at your family and everything is just so good. And you are all so happy.”

“It wasn’t always like that.”

But Hikaru knew what he was talking about. Of course his sisters beat the shit out of him when they were all young and had underdeveloped prefrontal cortices, and of course he yelled at his parents when he was an angsty teenager, but that wasn’t really comparable to the loveless home that Pavel must have grown up in, to spend your entire childhood feeling like you were just another one of your parents’  _ research projects _ . Hikaru rested his hand on Pavel’s forearm. 

“You know it’s not going to change my feelings for you.”

“I know,” Pavel said quietly, “I just didn’t want you to see.”

Pavel squinted his eyes, glaring, almost, at the surface of the water. 

“I didn’t want you to see what I am like, when I come here.”

Hikaru wanted to say that Pavel wasn’t acting that different, that he was still the same Pavel, but it wasn’t true. Ever since they had arrived in St. Petersburg it was like the light faded from Pavel’s eyes, the same light that seemed to burn brighter when he was at the helm or watching the stars in the observation deck or wrapped in Hikaru’s arms. The way he had talked about this trip before they came to Earth, Hikaru wasn’t exactly expecting a grand tour of the city, but he hadn’t anticipated the way Pavel was going to walk through the streets like he had no choice but to be there. Even as he pointed out places of memory to him, his positive emotions were only a shadow of what Hikaru knew. 

“I don’t care if you’re in a bad mood.”

“And I want you to have a good time here but it’s just that I never really did.” Pavel laughed a little bit, and the sound of it made Hikaru’s chest tighten. “So I guess I don’t know how.”

“It’s okay.” It was all Hikaru could think to say, but it seemed to be enough, or maybe too much. Pavel uncrossed his arms and pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes and took a deep breath that shook at the end. Before he could let out another Hikaru was sitting up and pulling Pavel into his arms. 

Pavel pressed his face into his shoulder, wrapping his arms around him tightly, and they stayed like that, leaning into each other over the edge of the bathtub while Pavel took heavy, shuddering breaths against Hikaru’s collarbone. 

“It’s okay,” Hikaru said again. He would repeat it as many times as he needed to. 

“Why do I still care about this?” Pavel muttered. 

“Because it’s important.”

Hikaru could imagine that, even accounting for the times when they weren’t as close and he must have been spending time with other people, Pavel had never really let himself feel upset over all the things he was denied as a child. He didn’t know if he was feeling more inclined towards grieving with him or feeling anger towards his parents, for not realizing what they had done to their own son. Their amazing, intelligent, ambitious, loveable son. Ultimately, though, it was hard to wish away all of the bad things that had happened to Pavel, because the truth was that every piece of Pavel’s early life had led him to Starfleet Academy, and to Hikaru’s dorm room. So he wanted to get angry, he wanted to cry, but he couldn’t; he couldn’t dare to imagine anything differently. 

He settled for holding Pavel tighter, even though the edge of the bathtub was pressing against his stomach uncomfortably and he was still gross and sweaty from his run and Pavel was going to have to take another bath. None of those things really mattered. 


	33. chapter thirty three: year eight

Sunday was cloudy and gray and the wind coming off the water was strong enough to bring tears to their eyes as they walked through the city that morning. Hikaru didn’t know where Pavel was taking him, exactly, only that wherever it was he seemed to be in a better mood about it than when they’d gone to his parents’ house. They took two trams and a bus from their hotel, and Hikaru’s best guess after they seemed to be passing through all the major looking parts of the city was  _ cemetery _ . It was the right kind of day to visit a grave, anyway.

His guess was right. They stopped before the entrance to the cemetery so Pavel could buy flowers. Hikaru just watched him smile and speak sweetly to the florist, and he didn’t know if he would ever get tired of the sound of his voice when he spoke his native language. Pavel walked back up to him with a bouquet of white roses. 

“I didn’t know people still did this,” Hikaru said while they walked. He saw a few other people making graveside visits, and more than half of the graves had flowers over them, some of them still fresh and some withered and bending in the wind. The grass was long and wild and a little bit overgrown, even though the cemetery probably still had a lot of visitors. It was like everyone had agreed to just let it grow, to let life continue on this patch of land just like it would on any other. 

“In this part of the world it is still very common, I think.” Pavel led them down a path that cut through the cemetery, long and lined with trees like columns on either side that marked the entrances to each aisle of gravestones. Eventually they turned and stepped off of the path, into the grass. 

“So you came here a lot growing up?”

“Not until my Grandmother died, and then yes. But before that my granddad also took me to his father’s grave every year, in a different place. And now I come to his.”

He weaved through the cemetery so easily that he probably could have found his way with his eyes closed. Finally they came to a stop in front of two gravestones placed next to each other. Hikaru didn’t know how to read the cyrillic alphabet but he could recognize what Pavel’s last name looked like in it. In their gravestones were carvings of their faces as well, from when they were younger. Hikaru looked for the points of resemblance, the line of his grandfather’s nose and those same, sharp cheekbones, his grandmother’s large eyes. 

“Your grandparents?”

“Yes. Vladislav and Irina.”

The white roses went over Irina’s grave, and they stood out against the gloomy day like the sun was shining on them. Pavel took his backpack off of his shoulder and sat down on the grass, motioning for Hikaru to sit next to him. Out of his backpack he unloaded a few candles, white ones in simple glass containers tall enough to keep the wind out. He lit them one by one until there were two candles at the foot of each of his grandparents’ graves. Hikaru was fascinated in the ritual of it. He couldn’t think of a time in his life when he had ever seen such a sacred activity like this. 

Pavel reached into his bag again and Hikaru wondered what else he could have brought to place on their graves. He didn’t know what he was expecting but he felt his eyes go wide when Pavel pulled out a bottle of vodka. 

But then again, considering where they were, it seemed about right. He watched Pavel swallow more than enough for one shot, not even flinching. Hikaru snorted, shaking his head, even as Pavel raised an eyebrow at him.

“Is this how you people honor your ancestors?”

“It’s what my Granddad taught me to do. Here.” Pavel held out the bottle to Hikaru and he took it, mostly because it felt like he had no choice in the matter. He tried to drink the same amount that Pavel had and almost choked. 

“Jesus christ. What percentage is this?”

“I think forty nine,” Pavel studied the bottle for a second, and then he held it forward and poured a good amount of vodka into the ground over his grandfather’s grave. He looked like he was considering pouring the whole thing out and then stopped, and took another, smaller sip. 

“Your grandfather took you to the cemetery and gave you vodka as a child?”

“Yes.” Pavel stared at him, unblinking, like that was an absolutely normal thing to do with your grandson. He offered the vodka to Hikaru again. 

“We are not about to get drunk at your grandparents’ grave on a Sunday morning.”

“Don’t you want to pay your respects?”

Pavel was absolutely serious. Hikaru gave one more thought to how strange this situation was, coming from a culture where visiting graves was already a little bit archaic. And getting drunk at your ancestor’s grave; that just seemed sacrilegious. But Hikaru knew that Pavel’s grandfather had been important to him, possibly the most important person in his life when he was growing up, and this was the closest that Hikaru was going to get to meet him. He could imagine that if Pavel’s grandfather was alive with him, he probably would have done whatever he could to impress him. So he did the next best thing. He shrugged and took the vodka, noticing how Pavel’s face lit up. 

It went down easier the second time.

 

-

 

Forty five minutes later, the bottle was empty and they were drunk and they ended up in a tiny little bakery sandwiched between a laundromat and a technology repair shop. Hikaru could hardly remember how they got there. The place looked like it had been in business for centuries, if the old furniture and the layers of dust in the corners and on the window panes were any indication. Pavel cheerfully ordered them what must have been one of everything, and the old lady behind the counter seemed to recognize who he was after a minute and immediately called for the other employees to come out and see him. After ten minutes of being cooed over Pavel finally got a tray full of baked goods which he carried to the small table next to the window, grinning at Hikaru. 

Hikaru was drunk enough that he was ready to devour everything. He barely had the self control to wait for Pavel to explain what each pastry was before inhaling it like a man starved, and eventually Pavel just gave up on trying and started to laugh. 

“I know you think I’m exaggerating because I’m drunk, but listen,” Hikaru took another bite of something warm and soft and chocolate filled and almost moaned, “this is the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”

Pavel let out another bark of laughter, cheeks turning pink. He leaned over across their little table and took the rest of the chocolate-filled something out of his hand to finish it himself, grinning at Hikaru. 

“I love this place,” he said, a little bit breathless. 

“How long have you been coming here?” Hikaru asked. He remembered the ladies behind the counter looking so delighted to see him again, and probably, he guessed, going on and on about how much he’d grown up. 

“Since before I can remember.”

Hikaru scanned the remaining pastries on the tray, picking out something with crushed pistachios on top. He bit into it and there was pistachio cream, too, and he decided that St. Petersburg really wasn’t so bad, after all. 

“My Grandma would take me here, on Sundays,” he said, and then wiped the traces of chocolate from his mouth with the back of his hand. “She always told my mother she was taking me to church.”

“Your family’s religious?”

“No, not my parents, of course not,” Pavel laughed, “I mean my Grandma was, but she just said she was taking me to church because she knew they wouldn’t fight with her on it.”

“And she took you here, instead?”

“Here, to the park, sometimes to a museum or something, or shopping. With her, those were the only times I remember I wouldn’t feel stressed about studying. I think she knew. I think that was why she did it.”

Hikaru was afraid to ask the question that came next, so he just kept stuffing his face, and was glad to hear Pavel’s responding laugh. He was happy that Pavel was laughing, today, even if it had taken him more than a few sips of vodka to get to this point. Pavel tore the corner off of a croissant and kept talking.

“She died when I was eight years old. And then my Granddad took over.”

“I’m sorry,” Hikaru said, mouth full, and Pavel waved him off and continued his disassembly of the croissant. 

“He started taking me here every Sunday, just like she did, and he made sure it was a secret. Although I don’t know if my parents cared at that point.”

When they’d finished eating one of the women came out from behind the counter and put down little cups of coffee in front of them, fluffing the top of Pavel’s hair. Hikaru was glad to see that the compulsion to fluff Pavel’s hair seemed to be universal. 

Vodka drunk, full of pastries, and now caffeinated, the day went from good to great. 


	34. chapter thirty four: year eight

“So what’s the plan for today?” Hikaru asked, still feeling a little bit of a hangover from when they’d gotten vodka drunk at noon the day before. He stretched and turned over and settled into the middle of the bed, watched Pavel where he was camped out in front of their big windows looking out at the view of the water. Yesterday they had managed to get in good enough spirits that Pavel was acting almost like himself again, but now he was back to being quiet and pensive, maybe a little disillusioned. He looked out at the Baltic Sea and Hikaru could sense that he wished he was looking up at the stars instead, from the observation deck of the Enterprise. 

“We’ll be back on the ship in like a week and a half, you know.”

“I know.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Yes.”

Pavel crossed his arms over his chest, and Hikaru watched the muscles in his back. As depressing as this trip seemed to get at times, he was still enjoying these moments of being with Pavel on Earth, especially in the morning. Something about it was just different than mornings on the ship. They weren’t in such a hurry all the time, for one, and no amount of ship programming could imitate what it looked like to see someone in the first light of the day. Even when Pavel was brooding at the window, Hikaru couldn’t help but look at him. The early light streaked across his skin, perfect and smooth and so pale from years of being cooped up in a starship. Hikaru’s eyes followed the light, and then the shadows, and then traced a path between the small little moles on his back, down to where his pajama pants hung low around his hips. Pavel turned to look at him over his shoulder, his face unreadable. 

“Don’t you miss it?”

“Of course I do.” Hikaru pushed up to rest on his elbows, and patted the bed beside him. “But I like this part too.”

After a second Pavel abandoned his post at the window and came to join Hikaru in bed again, settling on top of the covers. Hikaru carded his fingers through his hair and Pavel leaned into it before he turned his head to the side to look up at him. 

“Do you actually like it here?”

“I mean, I like being with you. That’s probably the main thing.”

“Are there other things?” Pavel asked, playing with the edge of the soft duvet in between his fingers. Hikaru smoothed his hair away from his face, watched it bounce right back a second later. He moved to the back of Pavel’s neck and could feel the tension in his muscles there, no doubt from the stress of this trip. He started to massage the stiffness out and was rewarded with a soft sigh and Pavel turning his face back into the mattress to give him a better angle. 

“I like seeing where you grew up, but mostly just the good things, like yesterday. That was pretty cool, actually.”

Pavel mumbled something unintelligible into the bed but Hikaru knew the general idea of it.

“It  _ was _ . I didn’t know you grew up with traditions like that.” Hikaru continued his massage on the back of Pavel’s neck, occasionally rubbing over his upper back, too. “That’s the other thing, I guess. Learning new things about you.”

Pavel lifted his head so he could say, 

“I think you already know all the things you need to know about me. We can leave.”

“Were you always so grumpy when you lived here?”

“Yes,” Pavel huffed, turning onto his cheek again, “I just never had someone I could take it out on before.”

Hikaru smiled and felt himself shaking his head. He thought about saying something snarky in response like  _ well I’m glad I could be of service _ but the truth was he really didn’t mind being there for Pavel to complain to. It had been a really important part just in their friendship, when Pavel finally felt comfortable showing his negative emotions around Hikaru instead of bottling them up. And they had come so far since then that Pavel had  _ willingly _ taken Hikaru on this trip even though he probably knew he was going to be bitchy the entire time. Hikaru’s hand drifted back into Pavel’s hair and settled there. 

“Well, I guess that isn’t true,” Pavel said, “That’s what we’re doing today.”

“What?”

“We’re meeting my friend.”

 

-

 

So Pavel had a friend here. Hikaru should have expected it, but it wasn’t like Pavel ever talked about anyone. All of the information he’d given about his time spent at the Russian Space Academy had made it sound like he spent those two years there completely alone and chained to a desk. Turns out that wasn’t entirely true. 

They actually went to part of the Academy campus to pick this guy up, and Hikaru really wanted to ask for a tour of the place, but based on the very advanced looking security systems surrounding it, that was probably out of the question. They just waited on the sidewalk across the street while Pavel nervously texted his friend to come out already. 

“Why are you nervous?”

“I don’t like coming back to this place,” Pavel snapped. Hikaru just wrapped his arm around his shoulders and hoped that didn’t make it worse. Pavel looked over at him, expression still tight, but there was warmth in his eyes. Hikaru leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. 

A few minutes later the huge gate blocking off the Academy building--Hikaru assumed it was student housing, based on what he could see above the gate--opened up and the man walking out immediately waved to Pavel from across the street. 

He looked like he might have been older than Hikaru, even. He was definitely taller. And he had dark eyebrows and light blond hair which looked like dyed it. He was wearing what must have been the Space Academy uniform, a dark blue jacket and slacks set that didn’t look so different from Starfleet’s cadet uniform. He walked towards them with the kind of attitude that almost made Hikaru think of Jim Kirk. Pavel shrugged out of Hikaru’s arm to meet him and the guy pulled him into a haphazard embrace, slapping his hand against Pavel’s back. All of a sudden Hikaru started to feel weird. 

It didn’t help that they kept speaking to each other in Russian. He could guess what they were probably talking about; he was probably remarking on how much Pavel had grown up since he was last in St. Petersburg three years ago, probably asking him how life out in space was going for him, maybe he was asking who the guy was who’d had his arm around him two seconds ago. Hikaru just politely waited to be introduced, trying not to look like he felt weird. 

Finally Pavel switched them to English. 

“Fedya this is Hikaru.”

The guy--Fedya, apparently--held out his hand and Hikaru shook it. 

“Fyodor,” he said, “Fedya is just a nickname.”

“So which one should I use?” Hikaru asked, and this guy was definitely shaking Hikaru’s hand a little bit too hard.

“Fyodor is fine.” He smiled, and it looked just enough like he was baring his teeth at him that Hikaru started to feel justified in his suspicion. He decided he was going to refer to him in his head as Fedya only. 

While they walked to find somewhere to eat, Hikaru fighting the urge to place his hand possessively around Pavel’s waist, he only wished that  _ they  _ had a secret language they could communicate in, like Pavel and Fedya could with Russian. Pavel, to his credit, tried his best to keep them all speaking in English, but Fedya was the one who kept switching languages, and then it really wasn’t Pavel’s fault for responding in Russian. It was his first language, after all. 

Hikaru really didn’t know what it was that was making him uncomfortable. It wasn’t like Pavel was flirting with the guy. Maybe just the knowledge that Fedya had known him first bothered him. And just the way he talked to Pavel, in either language, with this undertone of entitlement like he was trying to remind Hikaru of that fact. 

By the time they made it to the restaurant Pavel had chosen for lunch Hikaru had already decided that he didn’t like this guy. Sure, maybe he was being petty and a little bit jealous, but he didn’t like him, and the more Fedya tried to squeeze Hikaru out of the conversation by speaking Russian, the more he felt justified to dislike him. 

When they were sitting at a table looking over the menu, Pavel got a little bit of his energy back. He was smiley and talkative while he explained all of the different menu items to Hikaru, came up with the best things to order to that Hikaru could try all of the most important Russian foods. Hikaru was in awe, once again, at Pavel’s ability to be proud of his heritage even when life in his home country had treated him so poorly. 

And then they had to wait for their food to come out, which meant the three of them would have to talk to each other, instead of just Pavel and Hikaru holding a menu between the two of them while Fedya flipped casually through his own. 

“So how did you guys meet?” Hikaru dared to ask, trying to salvage whatever friendliness he still had for this guy. He was Pavel’s only friend here, after all. He had to at least try. 

“First year combat training,” Fedya replied, “Still can’t believe they made you go to that when you were just thirteen, Pasha.”

_ Pasha? Who the fuck is Pasha? _

It made Hikaru feel a little better to see Pavel shift uncomfortably at the nickname. Even if this was another thing Hikaru was left out of, at least it looked like Pavel actually wanted it that way. 

“I wanted them to treat me the same as any other student,” Pavel just said, voice a little bit restrained. Hikaru pressed their thighs together, just enough to remind Pavel that he was there. He knew that Pavel didn’t really like talking about his upbringing in general, but the two years he spent at the Space Academy were particularly touchy. He wondered if this guy Fedya really knew him that well at all. 

“He was a really good sport,” Fedya continued, “He could’ve tried to get out of it but he didn’t. Lucky for him I was there.”

“Fedya agreed to be my training partner after nobody else would do it,” Pavel explained, and Hikaru maybe started to understand why he was even still friends with this guy. He must have felt totally out of depth in a combat training course at age thirteen, while everyone else was probably at least five years older. Deep down, Fedya had to possess at least a few good traits, enough for him to volunteer to be his partner. Enough for Pavel to still feel compelled to meet with him years later. 

Hikaru thought about the fifteen year old Pavel that he had first met, who jumped to conclusions like he was competing for it in the olympics. He started to get it. 

The rest of the afternoon passed with about the same dynamic. Hikaru trying his best to be diplomatic, Fedya pretending he didn’t know that they were a couple and blatantly saying something provocative or possessive or not even in English, Pavel feeling obligated to respond. Hikaru didn’t even realize that he had moved his leg away from where it was pressed up against Pavel’s, it must have been unconscious, until Pavel’s hand came to the inside of his thigh and pulled it back. That, at least, made him feel a lot better. 

He could tell that Fedya noticed Pavel’s hand coming to Hikaru’s thigh, and saw his face change, and then watched as he excused himself to smoke a cigarette. It took less than a minute for Hikaru to piece everything together into his mind. As soon as Fedya was outside, he turned to Pavel. 

“You totally fucked him three years ago, didn’t you. When you came here on shore leave.”

Pavel scoffed, but the color that rose in his cheeks was a very clear yes. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I regret it.”

“I don’t care what you did before we got together, you know.” 

Pavel raised an eyebrow at him. Hikaru just reached his arm to rest along the back of Pavel’s chair and he leaned closer. 

“Unless you want me to care.”

That made Pavel blush a little darker and Hikaru smiled. 

“It’s fine,” Pavel cleared his throat.

“I think I’m just jealous that he gets to use a nickname for you.”

Pavel cringed. 

“It’s the same as my parents used for me growing up. Not something I like to hear during sex.”

Hikaru snorted at that. The thought of someone using the same nickname for you during sex that your parents had called you as a child. It was a little bit gross. He could maybe understand now why Pavel had described some of his first sexual encounters as terrible. He could also see across the restaurant that the culprit of said terrible sex, Fedya, was making his way back to their table. 

“Then I won’t call you that,” Hikaru said, low and close to Pavel’s ear, “Lieutenant Junior Grade Pavel Andreievich Chekov of the USS Enterprise.”

“I’d like to hear you try to use that during sex,” Pavel whispered back, smiling wide, and they had to put away that conversation topic when Fedya sat back down across from them, but the expression on his face, like he had just walked in on the two of  _ them  _ speaking a different language, for once, kind of made up for Hikaru feeling left out earlier. 


	35. chapter thirty five: year eight

 

The party for the reopening of the University library, with Pavel’s parents, was at least a little more bearable because they spent most of the night lost in the crowd, rubbing shoulders with smartly-dressed intellectuals who pretended to recognize Pavel as soon as he told them what his last name was. Their faces, outfits, and the languages they were speaking all started to blend into one, after a while. 

A handful of people, the closest colleagues to Andrei and Larisa, actually did recognize Pavel right away, and some of them actually looked more excited to see him than his parents did a few days before. They fawned over how old he had gotten, asked question after question about his mission on the Enterprise, his experiences in space, his future plans. Pavel actually willingly admitted to someone that he had just been promoted, and they immediately left to go get celebratory shots for everyone. 

It was a far cry from actually giving a shit about Pavel and how he was doing, but since these people hadn’t come up with impossible aspirations for him--like the ones his parents probably had--even with how little they knew him, they were still blown away. At a few different points in the evening Hikaru could see that Pavel was maybe even enjoying the attention, a little bit, and then the light in his eyes would fade as quickly as it came, as soon as someone turned away from their conversation with him or changed the subject to his father. 

Still, Pavel had charmed everyone by the end of the night, and he didn’t even look like he was trying. 

“They were all obsessing over you, you know.”

“They don’t give a shit about me,” Pavel said, staring straight ahead at the wall of the elevator, hands clasped tightly behind his back. Even what Hikaru could see of his facial expression was almost unreadable. 

“That’s not what it looked like.”

“I’m just an accessory. I’m a party trick. I was there for my parents to show off to their friends like they do a new supercomputer or a housekeeping robot.”

“Why wouldn’t they want to show you off?”

Hikaru was trying, and failing, apparently, to make Pavel see things in just a slightly more positive way. Pavel turned his head to the side so he could look at him, squint at him, really. 

But Hikaru was right. Or he believed he was, when he’d said that Pavel was worth showing off. Especially now, and especially tonight. He was the youngest to ever graduate from Starfleet, the youngest member of the bridge crew, the smartest person Hikaru had ever met and probably would ever meet. And tonight, holy shit, in that jet black suit that fit him so perfectly, showed every line and curve of his body. His dress shirt that was open just a few buttons and his hair left wild and curly. Pavel was so perfect. Pavel deserved to be shown off. Hikaru maybe understood, though, how his parents’ method of showing him off wasn’t quite as genuine as Hikaru’s would be. 

Pavel turned back to stare at the wall. 

“Are you in a bad mood?” Hikaru asked, and he saw the corner of Pavel’s mouth tick up. 

“No.”

“Then what’s up with you.”

“It’s just that I’ve wanted to take your suit off since I first saw you put it on seven hours ago,” Pavel said to the wall in front of them. 

“Oh.”

The elevator got to their floor and Pavel took his hand and all but dragged him down the hall to their room. Hikaru pushed him up against the door, just to hear the way his breath caught in his throat when he pressed their bodies together. 

“Let’s go inside,” Pavel whispered, his voice already sounding lower and rougher from arousal. Hikaru didn’t respond, he only trapped him against the door even more, his body pressed against him and his leg slipping in between Pavel’s thighs. He watched as Pavel’s mouth fell open just a little bit, as something in his eyes caught fire. He grabbed for the lapels of Hikaru’s jacket and pulled him even closer to crash their mouths together. 

“You want to go inside?” Hikaru asked, pulling away just enough to break the kiss.

“Yes, stupid.”

“You wouldn’t rather have me just fuck you right here in the hallway at two in the morning?”

A whine escaped from somewhere in the back of Pavel’s throat and he kissed Hikaru again, fiercely, desperately, like he couldn’t bear to do anything else in that moment. 

“You seem like you’re interested in that.”

Hikaru brought his hand to Pavel’s groin, where his slacks were pulled tight around his dick, and stroked him lazily over the fabric. Pavel’s eyes fell shut and he seemed to lose himself for a minute just to the feeling of it, fingers going loose where they gripped Hikaru’s jacket. Hikaru breathed out a laugh. 

“Should we just stay out here?”

“Do you ever stop talking,” Pavel deadpanned, even as he kept angling his hips forward, pressing into Hikaru’s hand. 

“You  _ are _ in a bad mood.”

With his free hand Hikaru pulled the room key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. It took more effort than he would have expected to get Pavel to go through it. They kicked their shoes off and Pavel pulled Hikaru by his lapels again, across the room towards their big hotel bed. He had this playful look on his face, sparkling in his eyes and pulling at the corners of his mouth, and Hikaru couldn’t help but smile back at him, if only for the fact that Pavel had no idea what was coming, that his mouth was going to be so busy moaning his name for the rest of the night that he wasn’t going to get another chance to smirk at him like that. 

They reached the bed and Pavel turned them around, and Hikaru let himself be manhandled and led to sit down on the bed, but when Pavel tried to push his jacket off of his shoulders Hikaru grabbed his wrists. 

“Not yet,” he said, and watched Pavel’s face change as soon as he heard Hikaru’s tone of voice, eyes going wide. “You first.”

Pavel stared at him for a second longer, and then moved to obey, taking a few steps back so he had room to take his own suit off. Hikaru leaned back on the mattress on his elbows and watched. Watched every item of clothing come off. If he was in a better mood tonight, a little less bitchy and a little more patient, he would probably have made more of a show of it. This wasn’t like the exaggerated strip teases Pavel gave him sometimes, spending way longer than necessary peeling off his Starfleet uniform to the point where the two of them inevitably dissolved into laughter. This time Pavel was tearing at his clothes like they were offending him. His jacket hit the floor, and then his slacks came off, and then he was unbuttoning his shirt so fast he almost tore the buttons. He stepped out of his boxer briefs and was coming back towards the bed, reaching for Hikaru next. 

“No,” Hikaru said, and Pavel nearly sighed, crossing his arms over his bare chest. Hikaru smiled and moved up the bed to settle against the pillows. “I think I’ll keep my suit on for now.”

“So what am I supposed to do,” Pavel asked flatly, and there was a clear underlying question of  _ what do you want me to do _ . Hikaru watched him expectantly, waiting either for him to ask the question that he didn’t ask or answer it for himself. He took out his cufflinks and set them on the bedside table. Pavel chewed on his bottom lip, and finally uncrossed his arms, and it looked like his attitude was maybe getting better when he asked, quietly,

“What do you want me to do?”

“Come here.”

Hikaru motioned for him to join him on the bed, and Pavel straddled his lap. His hands settled, hesitantly, on Hikaru’s shoulders, and when Hikaru didn’t move them away he slid them down to his chest, leaned forward, and pressed their mouths together. Hikaru liked having Pavel like this, naked and hard and waiting to be told what to do. He let Pavel continue exploring his mouth, and only broke away finally to reach into the drawer of the bedside table. 

“Get yourself ready for me,” Hikaru said low into his ear, and he didn’t miss the way Pavel shivered at the command as the bottle of lube was placed in his hand. Pavel nodded quickly and Hikaru felt himself smiling. He went ahead and broke character a little more just to pull Pavel forward and kiss his forehead. 

And then he watched as Pavel lifted himself up a little bit, shifted until he found the right angle where he could reach one hand around his back and press one finger into himself, almost immediately gasping at the intrusion. He had to hold onto the headboard with his other hand just to keep steady. Hikaru just stayed there, captivated by the sight of Pavel above him, breathing hard and writhing with his eyes squeezed shut while he definitely fingered himself too fast and too rough. Finally he slid his hands up Pavel’s shaking thighs, pointedly ignoring his dick hanging between his legs, and Pavel let out a frustrated moan. 

“Keep going,” Hikaru mused, continuing the slow movements of his palms across Pavel’s legs, his hips, trying his best not to interrupt anything. Pavel’s breaths came harsher and louder. “You don’t need to be so rough with yourself, you know.”

“Are you imagining it’s me?” Hikaru asked quietly, and Pavel nodded his head once, eyebrows drawn together in concentration. 

“Is that what you want? Do you want me to be rough with you?”

Pavel nodded again, rapidly. Hikaru could see him starting to sweat, his muscles tensing and straining more the longer he stayed like that, working himself open on his knees. 

Hikaru had planned on drawing this out, on having Pavel ride him first before giving him what he probably wanted all along and just fucking him into the mattress. He had thoughts, too, about making Pavel wait even longer, pushing him down onto the bed only to wrap his mouth around his cock and tease him until he was so desperate he couldn’t form the words to beg for Hikaru anymore. 

But all of those ideas went out the window as soon as he saw Pavel nodding his head up and down like that, admitting so easily what he wanted. Hikaru realized that, more than anything, he just wanted to give Pavel what he needed tonight. 

“Do you want it now?” Hikaru asked, hands wrapped tightly around Pavel’s hips and Pavel nearly sobbed as he nodded yes for the third time. He let go of the headboard and almost fell over onto the mattress, but Hikaru caught him and flipped them over, pressed Pavel down against the pillows. Pavel looked up at him through his lashes, chest still rising and falling rapidly, blushing from his face down to his stomach where his cock was so hard it was leaking, and slowly lifted his arms up above his head, as if suggesting they could be tied to the headboard, and that was a good idea, Hikaru thought. He loosened his tie from around his neck. It was like Pavel let out a sigh of relief as soon as his hands were tied, like being tied down had allowed him to finally relax some of that crazed, desperate energy he’d had since they were making out in the hallway earlier.

He took his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves, caught Pavel frowning at the fact that he still wasn’t getting naked, but before he could complain about it Hikaru settled between Pavel’s legs, poured more lube onto three of his fingers and pushed them inside. Hikaru had learned by now how to walk the line of rough but not too rough, how to give Pavel the burn and intensity he wanted without worrying that he might be hurting him. Hand twisting as he moved his fingers in and out, on this side of too fast, just barely missing his prostate every time, Hikaru watched Pavel fall apart. He panted and writhed and tugged at the tie around his wrists, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted more or less. 

“Please don’t break my tie,” Hikaru said quietly, nonchalantly, as he curled his fingers again, giving Pavel only a second of the angle he was desperate for before taking it away. Pavel huffed, color high in his cheeks. “It’s new,” he added. 

“I can’t promise that.” Pavel’s voice was strained, but he opened his eyes to look at Hikaru and there was still something playful there. Hikaru smiled and pushed up against his prostate just to watch Pavel’s face break as he whined from the back of his throat, his whole body tense. Hikaru hadn’t even touched his cock yet. He wondered if he was actually going to need to, tonight. 

“Please,” Pavel breathed, just barely audible, and that was the word Hikaru was waiting to hear, he realized. The sound of Pavel begging coursed through his body like fire in his veins, straight to his dick and suddenly he could not stand that he was still fully clothed. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against Pavel’s stomach, something like an apology, before he pulled out and got off of the bed to undress. 

Even though he knew what was coming next Pavel still looked distraught at his absence, craning his neck to watch him from the bed. Hikaru could barely take his eyes off of Pavel, either, for as long as it took to get his clothes off. The way he looked with his wrists tied to the headboard, chest heaving, long legs splayed out across the bed, open and vulnerable and waiting for Hikaru. Hikaru nearly tripped over with how fast he tried to get out of his pants. 

And then he was back on Pavel in a second, coming onto the bed and lifting one of Pavel’s legs up to rest on his shoulder so he could press his cock inside. He knew it was bordering on too much too fast when he saw how Pavel held his breath, face twisting a little. 

“Breathe, baby.” Hikaru slid all the way in and paused, let him adjust for a second. Pavel finally let out the breath he’d been holding, and softened his face, and shifted around Hikaru’s cock in a way that made him instinctively groan. 

Normally he would give Pavel more than enough time to get used to the stretch, but he had to remind himself that Pavel wanted something rougher tonight. He had asked for it. He needed it. And Hikaru was there to give him what he needed. He started to move, watching Pavel’s mouth fall open, silently, too overwhelmed by the friction of Hikaru’s cock inside him to even make a sound. It was all the encouragement he needed to build up a steady rhythm, fucking him hard and deep, pulling out almost completely every time before slamming back in. And he watched. He watched as Pavel went from silent gasps to incoherent whines and back to silence again, watched him simultaneously push Hikaru back with his thighs and roll his hips to try to get his cock in deeper. 

He seemed to go back and forth, at first, between feeling like it was too much and not enough, until it looked like he’d finally lost himself to it, eyelids going heavy as Hikaru thrust into him again and again. Hikaru took in the sight of his blissful expression, lidded eyes and red cheeks and his mouth hanging open. 

“You are so perfect.” The words were out before Hikaru had even thought about it. It was really all he could say when Pavel was like this. Pavel whined, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Are you okay?”

“ _ Please. _ ” Pavel’s voice broke off at the end. He opened his eyes to look at Hikaru, pleading. 

“What is it?”

“I--I need--” he babbled. 

“What do you need?”

“I-- _ please _ \--touch me.”

The sound of Pavel begging like that went straight to his cock again and Hikaru nearly lost his rhythm. He didn’t have to think about whether or not he wanted to draw this out, about whether or not he wanted to make Pavel beg some more. He reached down to wrap his hand around Pavel’s dick, and Hikaru hadn’t even stroked it once before he was coming, hard, arching off against the bed and pulling his wrists enough that the tie around them really should have ripped. Even as Pavel started to come down, gasping and whining a little bit from overstimulation, Hikaru kept his pace, chasing his own orgasm. He knew he was close as soon as he felt Pavel coming on his own cock, as soon as he saw how beautifully he fell apart. And now Pavel was going boneless underneath him. If he wasn’t tied with his wrists to the headboard he would have collapsed into the bed by now, soft and pliant and breathing in short little gasps of air while Hikaru continued to fuck him. 

They both groaned when Hikaru finally came. Hikaru wanted to collapse into Pavel’s chest and stay there, but Pavel was still tied up. His arms were shaking a little and Hikaru could bet that it was getting uncomfortable now, especially after how he’d been straining and arching off of the bed while he fucked him. He pulled out and headed to the bathroom, leaving Pavel on the bed looking totally spent and maybe even half-dead at this point. He came back out with a towel and tried to clean Pavel off quickly, and then went to toss the towel in the laundry bin. Pavel still had his eyes closed when Hikaru approached the bed again, but he huffed, shifted uncomfortably and pulled at the tie that bound him to the bed. 

“Hey, it’s okay, I’m coming.”

Hikaru sat down at the edge of the bed and carefully undid the tie around Pavel’s wrists, placing his arms gently at his sides when it was finally off. 

“Thanks,” Pavel said quietly. Hikaru was going to get up to put the tie away, but before he could move Pavel was reaching for him. So he threw the tie on the ground instead and settled onto the bed beside him. Pavel’s arms wrapped around him, and Hikaru just smoothed the hair back from his forehead, damp with sweat. His cheeks were still pink, and even as he started to calm down Hikaru could tell that there was still something there, and he needed some sort of reassurance, after what they’d just done. And maybe after more than just the sex tonight. 

“You did so good,” he said, continuing the rhythmic movement of his palms across Pavel’s forehead and into his soft hair. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the space between his eyebrows, the spot where that little line always showed up when he was upset. “You did so good tonight.”

Pavel’s breath hitched, and Hikaru knew it was about more than just the sex. 

Even as his breaths came out shaky and slowly turned to sobs, as the tears welled up in his eyes and spilled over onto his cheeks, Hikaru didn’t stop holding his face in his hands, kissing him gently and repeating, again and again, every word of praise he could think of. 

“You did so good,” he whispered, mouth ghosting against Pavel’s forehead, “You’re so perfect.”

Pavel just choked again, shaking his head no. Hikaru caught his face again between his hands, holding him still. 

“You are.”

Pavel squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to turn his face away from Hikaru, to hide. 

“I didn’t want to bring you here,” he said, mouth halfway against Hikaru’s palm. His voice was raw and vulnerable and almost sorry, like he didn’t think Hikaru already knew that. 

“I know.” Hikaru traced his thumb across the soft skin of Pavel’s cheek, across the line of his cheekbone, wiping away another tear. “I know it’s hard.”

Pavel’s arms had already fallen from Hikaru’s back, too weak and too tired to keep them wrapped around him. His hand snaked up to grip tightly around Hikaru’s wrist as he leaned his head further into the palm of his hand, like he didn’t know where else to go. 

“I know it’s hard, and you’ve had to be so strong. Nobody sees how strong you are, but I do. And I’m so proud of you.”

Pavel only cried harder, and Hikaru knew that he needed this. He pulled Pavel into his chest, one hand smoothing down the line of his back as he shook and sobbed and the other keeping Pavel’s head snug against his shoulder. 

Even though he needed it, and he deserved it, and Hikaru would give it to him all the time if he could, Pavel never really asked for reassurance like this. When Hikaru would remark about how smart he was, how well he was doing, how much everyone seemed to admire him, he always deflected it, or laughed it off, or changed the subject, and Hikaru knew it was because it made him uncomfortable. It was clear, now, why it did, because Pavel probably never got any encouragement growing up from the two people who were supposed to be raising him. He didn’t know what it was like to receive it. He didn’t know that he was worthy of praise. 

It was amazing, really, how much he had been able to accomplish without knowing that, how far he’d come before Hikaru was undoubtedly the first person to tell Pavel that he was proud of him, sitting next to him on his childhood bed in his parent’s house that one Christmas. 

Tonight was no different than that afternoon of their holiday break back at the Academy, Pavel had needed to open up first, to let Hikaru in, to let himself really hear the words that he usually dismissed. And Hikaru would say them until the sun came up, or until Pavel calmed down and finally fell asleep, or whichever came first. And then he would look at Pavel laid out across the pillows, covered in morning light, and hopefully, he’d remember to say it again. 

Pavel fell asleep not long after his breathing finally slowed down and leveled out, still tucked against Hikaru’s chest, and even though their clothes were scattered around the floor and he hadn’t brushed his teeth and he hadn’t closed the curtains to block out the rising sun, Hikaru closed his eyes and fell asleep, too. 


	36. chapter thirty six: year eight

Their shore leave didn’t really feel like a vacation until they were on the flight back from St. Petersburg, even though they sat on the plane for half the flight and had to plan out how they were going to portion out their time in San Francisco, almost down to the hour. They only had about a week and a half, which, the more they listed off all of the things they had to do, felt like an extremely short amount of time. 

There was seeing Hikaru’s family, obviously, and they had some business to take care of for Starfleet, exit paperwork type stuff and performance reviews which Jim would no doubt spend way too long filling out for each and every member of his crew. They needed to find an apartment to move into after their mission ended in a few months, or else risk having to live in Hikaru’s childhood bedroom for their first few weeks back on Earth. Hikaru was scribbling all of his notes in the margins of an in-flight magazine, planning out the afternoons when they could reasonably plan apartment tours, when Pavel added, 

“Don’t forget we have to see the baby.”

“Oh, fuck,” Hikaru muttered, “That’s right.”

He figured he may as well just cross out all of the plans he had just made, considering the likelihood that they would be locked inside, either literally or through emotional manipulation, as soon as they set foot in Yuki’s apartment. 

“So, what, should we just wing it?” Hikaru asked.

“Yes.”

Hikaru sighed, because he had just spent upwards of an hour already on this discussion, trying to come up with a plan, all in vain, apparently. Pavel just took the pen and magazine out of his hand and flipped to the crossword puzzle, which was already half-filled by a previous passenger. He pressed the pen against his bottom lip while he studied it. 

“Five letter word for multilingual,” he said, and Hikaru finally gave up and relaxed into his seat and glanced out the window at the clouds rushing past them, fast enough to make him dizzy if he wasn’t used to it from four years at the helm of a starship. “ _ Is _ there even a five letter word for that?”

“Uhura.”

Pavel snorted, and even though it definitely wasn’t the right answer, wrote UHURA into the crossword puzzle in permanent ink. 

 

-

 

Yuki’s baby was adorable. His name was Noah and he was just a few months old and Hikaru was in love with him already. He was adorable and tiny and chubby and he looked up at everyone with big bright eyes. Even more than being in love with Noah, though, Hikaru was in love with the sight of Pavel playing with him. Pavel held him in his arms, his tiny feet coming to rest against Pavel’s lap, and he bounced Noah up and down until he giggled and smiled at him goofily and talked in sweet Russian that Noah responded to with his own little baby noises. 

Hikaru just watched them both, standing frozen in the kitchen of Yuki and Victoria’s apartment after he’d agreed to help make lunch. Yuki showed up next to him with the empty bowl she had been scouring the kitchen for a second ago. 

“I might not let him leave, you realize that, right,” she asked. Hikaru didn’t even respond. He really had no idea what he could possibly say that wouldn’t make him sound like a huge lovesick idiot. He started putting handfuls of chopped fruit into the bowl, eyes still stuck on what was probably the most attractive man in the world holding the most adorable baby in the world. Then again, he might be a little biased. 

Victoria passed through the living room on her way to the kitchen, pulling her hair up into a ponytail as she walked. Once she stopped blocking the view and Hikaru saw Pavel and Noah again, it hit him just as hard as it did the first time. He heard the sound of Victoria kissing Yuki on the cheek before she must have turned around and seen it, too. 

“Wow,” she said quietly, “I really thought I was gay a second ago.”

Yuki scoffed, and that was apparently the cue for Victoria to press a few more kisses to her cheek. 

So Hikaru wasn’t actually biased at all. Pavel really was the hottest man in existence and Noah was the world’s cutest baby, and the two of them combined were almost too powerful. Hikaru didn’t even know he had paternal instincts until they were suddenly on fire and now all he wanted was his own baby just so he could have Pavel carry it around all the time. 

The three of them just watched from behind the kitchen counter, like absolute creeps. Finally Pavel glanced over at Hikaru, mouth open like he was maybe about to ask when the food would be ready, only to witness them all immediately looking away and pretending like they had actually been doing something a second ago and not just creeping on him and the baby. 

“Do you want him?” Pavel asked Yuki, clearly in reference to her child.

“Do  _ you? _ ” Yuki asked Victoria, clearly  _ not _ referring to their child, just loud enough that Hikaru could hear it too and let out a snort of laughter. Pavel raised an eyebrow at him. He just shook his head dismissively, and tried to go back to cutting fruit even as Pavel turned his attention to Noah again. 

It was just really hard to focus, with the two of them being so goddamn  _ cute _ like that. Once Pavel started to sing to Noah, something cheerful and rhythmic like you would hear on a playground, Hikaru just gave up and put the knife down before he accidentally cut himself.

 

-

 

“So do you two have a plan after your mission ends in a few months?” Hikaru’s mom asked, back in the family house in San Francisco that evening, once the dinner plates were gone and replaced by coffee and cheesecake. Hikaru’s mouth was still full of cake by the end of the question and he looked over at Pavel so he could answer. 

“Probably we will get an apartment here for a little while. Until the next thing.”

The proper way to continue that conversation, in Hikaru’s opinion, would have been inquiring about this “next thing” and what it could be, if they wanted to go on another 5 year mission, if they’d like to return to the Enterprise, and what the two of them planned on doing in San Francisco before their Starfleet money ran out and they had to make those decisions. Instead, for some reason, Hikaru’s mother decided to ask, 

“How many bedrooms? In the apartment that you’re getting.”

Aiko choked and almost spit coffee onto the tablecloth and Hikaru tried very hard not to let his face turn red. Pavel wasn’t so successful. He could see the color showing up on the tips of his ears, first, and then he was completely blushing down to his neck. 

“One,” Hikaru answered flatly, “One bedroom Ma. Is that what you all were sitting here thinking about?”

As soon as he’d finished saying that they were moving into a one bedroom apartment everyone at the table was suddenly fumbling around in their pockets, and then they all had their wallets in their hands. Hikaru’s dad pulled out a twenty dollar bill and started to pass it to Yuki and Yuki reached for it with a satisfied grin on her face but both of them paused when Aiko held her hand up. 

“Wait wait wait,” she said, “When  _ exactly _ did you two get together.”

Hikaru thought for a second. The line there was a little bit blurred, because they hadn’t had all of their first times as a couple all in the same day, or anything. The timeline that it had happened on was all out of order. After all, it had  _ started _ with them sleeping together.  

“Four and a half months ago,” Pavel finally said, and Hikaru looked and he was still blushing. He wondered if it would get worse if he leaned over and kissed Pavel on his bright pink cheek. 

Yuki groaned and everyone held out their money to Aiko instead, who graciously took it and tucked it into her wallet. In all she must have earned almost a hundred dollars right then. 

“Ever since Pavel started showing up in all your video calls I knew it was just a matter of time.”

“I thought you were already together at that point,” Yuki whined. 

“I thought at Yuki’s wedding,” Hikaru’s mom added. Aiko shook her head. 

“No, Ma, Pavel slept with one of Yuki’s bridesmaids, remember.” 

Now  _ that _ made Pavel blush darker than Hikaru could have imagined. 

Hikaru turned so he could raise an eyebrow at his father, who apparently was also a part of this betting pool but hadn’t said what his guess was yet. They caught eyes with each other and he shrugged. 

“I didn’t think it was going to happen until after your mission ended.”

“That was a bold bet to make,” Yuki said, and shoved a forkful of cake in her mouth. 

Underneath the table Hikaru placed his hand over Pavel’s thigh, and he half expected Pavel to jump what with how embarrassed he looked, but in response Pavel just looked at Hikaru, and laughed a little bit, and rested his head against his shoulder. Once everyone was done remarking about how cute the two of them were, the conversation eventually shifted to a different one of Hikaru’s family members. The next time Hikaru glanced down at Pavel on his shoulder, his cheeks were still just barely pink, and he didn’t know it was possible to feel this happy. 


	37. chapter thirty seven: year nine

Hikaru bought Pavel a new shirt to wear for the party at the end of their mission. He hadn’t exactly set out to find him one, but he was wandering around during the last day of their shore leave and stumbled upon a vintage shop with the most ridiculous assortment of Hawaiian shirts he had ever seen. Pavel was at the Academy that whole afternoon, which is how Hikaru ended up with nothing to do, and as he stood peering through the window at the rack full of tacky shirts he decided that it might be even better to surprise Pavel than to drag him back here sometime in the future.

So he bought Pavel one, the best one, which was dark purple with little planets and spaceships on it. It was either so ugly it was cute, or so cute that it was ugly, but either way he knew that he needed to see Pavel wearing it. 

He waited until the afternoon before the party to give Pavel the shirt, during those bittersweet final hours of packing up their quarters after they had docked back in San Francisco. Pavel smiled bigger than he had in days as he held it out in front of him.

“I thought you hated my party shirts.”

“I never said that.”

Pavel lowered the shirt into his lap so he could raise his eyebrows at Hikaru. 

“Okay, maybe I made fun of you like one time.”

“Mhm.”

Hikaru sighed a little bit, but there were really no negative feelings behind it. He shook his head and walked over to the bed and sat down next to Pavel, close enough that their thighs touched. And Pavel’s annoyance turned out to be fake, too. That goofy smile was back as soon as Hikaru was at his side. Hikaru leaned forward and kissed him, because he couldn’t help it. 

“Do you think for the next one we should put in a request to bunk together?” He asked. Pavel let his head fall to Hikaru’s shoulder while he apparently needed time to think about that one.

“I don’t know,” he said, voice already getting that edge of sarcasm to it, “I might need that spare room in case I have to hide from you.”

Hikaru knew Pavel was waiting for him to act offended at that. Instead he just nodded, and added,

“Or if I break up with you.”

He scoffed, and before Hikaru could finish laughing he was being tackled back onto the bed with all of Pavel’s hidden strength. But it really only took a few seconds for the fake wrestling to turn into a full-blown makeout on top of the bare mattress. 

The two of them were among the last to finally get off the ship. 

 

-

 

Considering the absolute chaos that was their five year mission, the party that Jim had organized for the crew was surprisingly low key. He rented out what must have been the entire floor of a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco, high enough that they could see the entire city through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Hikaru walked around the room to find the outline of the Starfleet campus, and squinted, shielding his eyes from the sun, until he thought he might have been looking at the Enterprise where they’d just docked this afternoon. It felt weird, to be looking at the ship from the outside, and from so far away. If that was even the right ship he was looking at. 

To be honest Hikaru had no idea how he was feeling about any of it. Maybe it was because they spent three of their shore leaves on Earth, that his mind hadn’t really caught up yet to the fact that it was actually over this time. He kept accidentally imagining the rest of the night and the following morning happening on the ship, like they were all going back there after the party. It felt wrong to remind himself that they weren’t going to go back on the Enterprise after this. It felt wrong to think about how this group of people might never end up in the same place at the same time ever again. 

So he didn’t think about that, and went to find the bar. 

In the process of finding the bar he found Christine Chapel. Hikaru almost didn’t recognize her without her uniform on, wearing navy slacks and a flowy blouse instead. She smiled at him and picked up two of the champagne glasses lining the bar, and walked over to meet him. 

“Hi there.”

“Am I allowed to drink with my counselor?”

Christine offered him a glass and he took it, clinking it against hers for a moment.

“Well if I was actually your counselor, then maybe it would be frowned upon.”

Hikaru laughed a little bit and she smiled at him as she took a sip of her champagne. He drank some of his, too, and maybe it was just that he was desperate to distract himself from the reality of everything, but he felt his head getting lighter already as the bubbles swirled around on his tongue. He’d heard someone say, once, that champagne tasted like it had stars inside of it. He had to think about that for a minute, as long as it took to remember that it was Pavel who’d said that, at his mom’s birthday party six years ago. He remembered what Pavel said a few hours later, when he was drunk and starting to get a little poetic, that maybe drinking champagne put stars inside of him, too.

“What’s your plan?” Hikaru asked, “If you have one.”

“Oh, nothing crazy. Just figuring out how to make sure that the next time I’m on a starship it’ll be as CMO.”

“You realize that’ll never happen on the Enterprise.”

“I’ve come to terms with it.”

Hikaru felt his heart sink a little bit. Of course he thought it was possible, that certain members of their crew would intentionally move on. He just didn’t want it to be the people that he liked. 

Christine seemed to sense that he didn’t want to keep talking about it and changed the subject, and Hikaru was becoming more and more convinced that she actually did have some sort of license in emotional counseling. 

“I can refer you to somebody down here, if you want.”

Okay, so the new conversation topic was only slightly less discomforting. 

“For therapy?”

“Yeah. It might be a good idea in between missions.”

Hikaru rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, and didn’t miss the way Christine tilted her head, narrowing her eyes a little bit even though she seemed to be enjoying this. After all, it could very well have been her last chance to push him out of his comfort zone while she was still technically his nurse and (unofficially) his counselor. 

“I don’t know.”

“You get really attached to people, you know?” She remarked, and took another sip of champagne. Hikaru shrugged. 

It was kind of an undeniable fact. Hikaru always had kept a handful of people closer to his heart than everyone else, to the point where it sometimes bordered on codependency, but he always felt like he chose wisely. His parents, his sisters, Janice for a while, and then Pavel, of course, and now that he was considering the idea of going to a stranger for counseling, he realized that Christine Chapel might be on that list, too. 

“Is that a bad thing?”

Christine smiled at him. 

“Not necessarily. It looks like you choose the right people.”

Hikaru smiled back at her, breathing out a bit of a laugh, and then looked over her shoulder, across the room, where Pavel’s curly hair had been in his peripheral vision this whole time. He was standing and talking to Scotty, smiling wide, wearing that ridiculous purple Hawaiian shirt. The sun was finally starting to set outside, casting a warm glow on the city and on the lines of Pavel’s face as he laughed and nodded and, a few seconds later, took a shot with their Chief of Engineering. 


	38. chapter thirty eight: year nine

Hikaru remembered feeling excited when he and Pavel were in San Francisco a few months ago, picking out their little one-bedroom apartment next to Grandview Park. Walking through the empty rooms he could imagine how it would look after they moved in, could imagine the walls covered in maps and posters and their framed Starfleet diplomas. They would probably haphazardly decorate it with a combination of cheap, easy-assemble furniture and second-hand pieces inevitably showing up at their doorstep every time a family member came to visit. He looked around the small bedroom and imagined their bed, with him and Pavel in it every night, a little bit of a graduation from sleeping together in Hikaru’s one-person quarters. And it made him excited. 

But now, finally making it home, to their new home, after a long party with the Enterprise crew and an even longer period of saying goodbyes (even though nearly everyone was staying in San Francisco anyway, at least for a little while), Hikaru looked around at the empty apartment and it was just that: empty. They had a bed, at least, thanks to one of Aiko’s roommates moving out of San Francisco a few weeks ago and leaving it behind. And there were a few boxes that Hikaru’s parents had brought over, the contents of which were a complete mystery to Hikaru. Other than that the place was completely empty, and maybe it was just the juxtaposition of saying goodbye to the rest of the crew after five years in space, and then coming home to empty rooms, but Hikaru had trouble feeling that excitement again, for the coming months. Or feeling anything, really. He replicated some ice cream and sat down on the kitchen floor. Pavel rifled through the drawers until he found two spoons, and then joined him. 

“The Captain was crying at the end, did you see that,” Pavel asked, putting an oversized spoonful of the chocolate ice cream into his mouth. 

“He’s a sentimental person.”

“Did you feel like crying?”

Hikaru thought about it. He wasn’t sure if he had been numb through that entire period of saying goodbyes or if he was feeling so much at once that his brain just shorted on him. Reality hadn’t really hit until they’d come back to this little apartment, and even then things still felt surreal. 

“I don’t know,” he answered, and dipped his spoon into the bowl next to Pavel’s. “I don’t think my brain has caught up yet.”

“Maybe you’ll have a delayed response. Wake up screaming in the middle of the night.” 

“Maybe. You know how I like to do that.”

Pavel snorted, and when he made that joke he must have forgotten about that whole period of the last year when Hikaru had nightmares for over a month straight. He tapped his spoon against Hikaru’s before hogging the ice cream again. 

“What are you feeling right now?” Hikaru asked, because he really wasn’t sure. He knew Pavel was sad, he  _ must _ be sad, because the Enterprise had to be the first place where Pavel had ever truly felt happy. Pavel shrugged, and slouched over a little bit. He looked down at the bowl of ice cream between them.

“I thought I would feel worse, I guess. But this is okay so far.”

“Really?”

“I think so,” he said. “It’s better that I’m not alone tonight.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The air went a little bit stale, then, and Hikaru could tell that both of them were holding themselves back from saying something. He was surprised to see that Pavel was holding back this time, actually. So he just let it out, and hoped that they had the same thought.

“Pavel?”

Pavel looked up from where he was scraping the sides of the bowl for the last of the ice cream, Hikaru could see expectation in his eyes, something like hope, for what Hikaru was about to tell him.

“I don’t want to stay here. I want to go back on the ship.”

The spoon Pavel was holding clattered against the bowl. 

“Oh thank god,” Pavel breathed, and closed the space between them on the kitchen floor. He all but knocked Hikaru over with how eagerly he dove into Hikaru’s arms. Hikaru laughed as they collapsed into a pile on the floor. 

“I think if I stayed here I would be miserable,” he muttered into Hikaru’s neck, hands twisting into his shirt. Hikaru felt himself smiling. He rolled Pavel onto his back underneath him and kissed him again and again, tasting chocolate on his lips.  

“Me too.”

So they had sex right there, on the kitchen floor, even though their bedroom was down the hall, just because. Because they were young and spontaneous and made for the kind of unpredictable, indescribable life like you can only have on a starship that’s hurling through space. Because they were never going to be normal people with normal jobs who lived in a normal apartment. Because sex on the kitchen floor, although it meant getting a few bruises and, once, slamming someone’s head accidentally against a cabinet, just felt like the thing they needed to do to prove all of that to themselves. 

 

-

 

They were on the doorstep of Jim Kirk’s apartment first thing the next morning. Pavel slammed his fist against the door enough times to wake up the entire hallway, and Jim finally answered, dressed in boxers and a t shirt, and all of the irritation left his face as soon as he recognized the two men standing in front of him. 

“What’s up?” Jim asked, voice cracking in the early morning. He cleared his throat. 

“We want to go back on the Enterprise,” Pavel said neatly. Jim’s eyes widened a little bit, like he was actually starting to wake up now. 

“If you’ll have us,” Hikaru added. 

“Wow.” Jim crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the doorframe, “I mean I knew you two were going to show up eventually but I figured I’d be able to get a full night of sleep first.”

He smirked at them, and Hikaru could feel the nervous energy coming off of Pavel once it became clear that there was no question about their place being saved for them at the helm. Jim gestured both of them inside and they followed him to the kitchen. 

His apartment was swanky and already furnished and way too nice looking for Jim to be the only one living there. They pulled barstools up to the kitchen counter while Jim started on a pot of coffee. 

“I would have come to you guys, you know, if you didn’t beat me to it. Pike pretty much guaranteed that I can take the Enterprise out again.”

“When?” Pavel asked. 

“Not for a few months at least, sadly.” Jim rubbed the sleep from his eyes, rolled his neck, woke up a little more as the coffee pot dripped. Hikaru remembered the events of last night and wondered why Jim only seemed tired, and not hungover, at eight in the morning. 

And then Leonard McCoy walked into the kitchen and he understood why. Why Jim didn’t have a hangover, why his apartment looked like a real life adult had decorated it. He walked around in bare feet like he definitely lived there, then took one look at Hikaru and Pavel sitting in his kitchen and said,

“What the hell?”

Jim beamed at him. 

“They want to come back on the ship.”

“Shocking,” he grunted, and moved towards Jim. As if on instinct, Jim poured him a cup of coffee and held it out just at the right time to reach Leonard’s hand. Pavel had been right, after all. The two of them were definitely an item. The way they occupied the kitchen, moving in and out of each other’s space effortlessly like they could sense where the other was at all times, they had to be. 

“Anyway,” Jim continued, offering both of them coffee and then moving to start on some scrambled eggs, “The ship needs repairs and modifications before Starfleet will let it out for another five years. If we’re lucky, Scotty said it could be ready to go in four months.”

He cracked a few eggs into the pan. 

“Or eight.”

Leonard let out a laugh that was kind of like a grunt. He was leaning his hip against the counter next to Jim and Hikaru didn’t miss the private little look they shared. 

“The longer I get to stay with my feet on solid ground, the better.”

“Shut up. You know you’re going to miss it.”

Leonard rolled his eyes. Hikaru glanced over at Pavel who was looking thoughtfully into his coffee mug as he swirled it around to mix the milk in. 

“You know, statistically, there is no difference in the sensation of organic and simulated gravity, or of their effects on the body.”

Jim pointed at Pavel, like he was seconding what he’d just said, and Leonard just shook his head and rubbed his tired eyes. Hikaru laughed, feeling overwhelmingly light with the realization that their goodbyes last night hadn’t really been goodbyes, at all. 


	39. chapter thirty nine: year nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO IF YOU MADE IT ALL THE WAY TO THE END i owe you my life and my first born child and i thank you so so much from the bottom of my squishy romantic heart. 
> 
> did i already say thank you? thank you.

So they could be back on the ship in four months. Or eight. A few days after their breakfast with Jim they ran into Scotty outside the shipyard, covered in grease stains and grinning from ear to ear,  and he guaranteed they’d be off in less than six. 

Six months. They could do that. 

Pavel enrolled in all the elective courses he hadn’t had time for as a cadet, and Hikaru started tutoring for flight sims and inexplicably becoming something of an assistant professor, and they had lunch with Aiko almost every day and dinner at Hikaru’s parents every weekend. Pavel became Yuki’s favorite babysitter. Hikaru had no idea how he managed to watch after Noah whenever they needed him, sometimes making the trip to Berkeley and back, and still turn in all of his assignments on time. 

He pulled all nighters sometimes, that was probably how, and when he would wake Hikaru before sunrise, still jittery from caffeine, and asked if he wanted to hike up Grandview Park, Hikaru always said yes. 

They covered the walls of their apartment with star charts, and filled the mismatched desks and shelves with Pavel’s textbooks. Hikaru grew plants, in pots that hung from the ceiling and covered the floor and window sills and anywhere where the sunlight hit. After a few weeks the place already resembled something halfway between a laboratory and a greenhouse, with a big striped couch that Yuki had found on the side of the road in Berkeley and forced them to keep. They collected things: specialty teas, funky flower pots from street markets that Hikaru always promised to find plants for, hawaiian shirts, each one tackier than the last. Pavel took another trip to Russia, by himself, and came back with all of the little model spaceships from his bedroom because he remembered how Hikaru smiled at them. 

Hikaru put photos on the fridge and the walls of the kitchen, the best ones he could find from the last eight years. Him and Pavel, blurry in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. Pictures with his family where he could track Pavel’s growth into the title of Honorary Sulu. Pictures Janice took during their years at the Academy which Hikaru didn’t remember being taken, of the two of them studying on the couch in their dorm or sitting next to each other in the cafeteria and laughing. A photo of the bridge crew from their second year in space, when they were actually starting to get friendly with each other. It was difficult, almost, to go through the pictures of him and Pavel from their time on the ship, knowing that that part of their lives, that first mission, was over. But he only had to remind himself that in just a few months they would be back out there, a completely new adventure ahead of them. 

So he put up those pictures, too, of Pavel in the rec room beating the Captain at chess, Hikaru smiling in the greenhouse, shore leave photos, Pavel spread out on the couch in Hikaru’s quarters because there was that one evening where Hikaru decided he needed to capture the way that man was capable of taking up an entire couch. He looked at them and felt nostalgic as much as he felt determined to make something of these few months before they got their ship back. 

He decided to learn how to cook, because that seemed like a productive thing to do when you owned a kitchen and had too much free time. The thing he really got into was bread making, because growing yeast was oddly satisfying, like growing plants. In the evenings when they were both home from the Academy Pavel would camp out in the living room and study for hours while Hikaru cooked. He started to experiment with which smells could get Pavel to look up from his textbooks and wander into the kitchen: sauteed garlic and onions, fresh sourdough bread, beet soup. After the first few times Hikaru made brownies he only needed to turn on the electric mixer before Pavel appeared in the doorway demanding a spoonful of brownie batter. 

Their little apartment almost started to feel like a home, after a while, but as soon as Hikaru would start to settle down and maybe even go a whole day without thinking about the Enterprise, something would pull him back. He would run into someone from the crew at the Academy or, occasionally, at the fucking grocery store of all places, and it was sometimes unbearable how much he could feel himself missing the Enterprise. He’d come home in a bad mood and angrily water his plants until Pavel came home from class and Pavel only every needed to take one look at him and he understood. 

They’d sit on the kitchen floor like that first night, Pavel still dressed in his light grey uniform which finally made him look exactly as old as he was, and eat ice cream and count the days they had left on Earth. Hikaru didn’t know how he would have ever survived these months without Pavel with him. 

If Pavel wasn’t there every morning, if they couldn’t have breakfast together before they went to the Academy to fill the time. If Pavel wasn’t there every night, if he didn’t always come home for dinner, if he didn’t let Hikaru show him the growth progress of every one of the plants in the house, if he didn’t spread out his homework on the living room floor in a way that never failed to remind Hikaru that some things hadn’t changed, if he didn’t eventually crawl into bed beside Hikaru and press their bodies together and remind him that he was here, always here, that they were together through everything. Hikaru didn’t know if he could have made it. 

The Enterprise was ready in four months and two weeks and three days. Hikaru could only imagine how many nights of sleep Scotty had missed and how many bureaucratic loops Jim had had to jump through to get it done. Pavel found out before Hikaru did, because apparently Jim had tracked him down after class, and he burst through the door and shouted his announcement loud enough that Hikaru nearly dropped the knife he was holding in the kitchen. 

Hikaru didn’t even finish the dinner he was cooking, he was too excited. After hearing the news he realized he didn’t really care about finishing dinner, or about their kitchen, or their apartment, or anything in their apartment except for Pavel and maybe his bonsai tree. 

Even after that day, though, when the Enterprise was officially cleared for departure, they still would have to wait a few weeks for Jim to finalize the ship’s crew and for Starfleet to approve everything. Those days felt unnaturally long, and maybe it was because Hikaru was so full of nervous excitement that he couldn’t be bothered with any of his hobbies that had gotten him through the last four and a half months. He felt like every day was just spent pacing back and forth in their apartment, or tapping his fingers on the desk while he watched cadet flight sims at the Academy, or talking about the upcoming mission with Pavel at night until the two of them wound each other up so much that they couldn’t fall asleep. 

Finally on the day before their scheduled take off it all broke open, and Hikaru felt like he could breathe again, like that huge wave of energy had crashed through him and started to settle. Pavel seemed to be experiencing the exact opposite. So while Hikaru was taking the last opportunity to cook them an intricate, not-replicated brunch, Pavel was borderline neurotic and decided he was going to do all of the packing for them just so he had something to do with his hands. 

He tried not to let the sounds coming from their bedroom worry him as he flipped slices of french toast in the pan, and cut up fruit, and cooked synthetic bacon. The smell of synthetic bacon on the stove usually brought Pavel into the kitchen without fail, though, so when he finished cooking an entire pack of it and had set the table with everything, still with no Pavel, he started to worry. 

Turns out he had a pretty good reason to. Hikaru walked into the bedroom to find their bed covered in what was probably at least 75% of all of their possessions. Pavel was standing at the closet and throwing shirts and pants and sweaters on top of the pile. 

“Doing alright in here?”

“I don’t understand how we have so much stuff,” Pavel said, and made a little distressed noise when he reached into the side of the closet and only found more.

“We don’t have to take all of it.” Hikaru moved towards the bed and flopped down onto what little space remained that wasn’t piled with Pavel’s Hawaiian shirt collection and Hikaru’s shoes and all of the random knick knacks his family gave him which lived in the back of the closet. Pavel huffed.

“If we won’t use it in five years why do we  _ own  _ it?”

“Are you in a bad mood?”

Pavel dragged a hand down his face, crossed his arms over his chest like he had to think about it. 

“Yes,” he said finally. He looked over at Hikaru, something like distress written into his face. Hikaru tried to think back to the day before they left for their last mission, if Pavel had been feeling like this too, then, or if it was something new. He remembered spending the entire afternoon at his family’s house, and then going out drinking, and then breaking Pavel’s heart, and then getting just a few hours of sleep before they were shipped out into space. If Pavel had felt nervous before they left, Hikaru hadn’t even given him time to talk about it. 

He pushed the mountain of clothes and shoes and god knows what else further to the end of the bed, only sending one sneaker falling to the floor, and patted the now empty patch of space. Pavel slumped his shoulders and walked over to the bed. He sighed a little bit as he climbed into bed next to Hikaru, sitting cross legged. Hikaru pushed himself up on his elbow and reached for one of Pavel’s hands. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Pavel looked down at his lap, taking Hikaru’s hand in both of his own, tracing the lines of his fingertips and the curve of his palm. Hikaru let him think about it first, and waited until he was ready. 

“I don’t know,” Pavel said quietly. 

“Are you nervous, maybe?”

Pavel nodded. Hikaru leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the closest part of him, which turned out to be his knee. He watched Pavel glance over at him and smile a little bit. 

“It’s just hard because...because I can’t really tell myself that nothing bad will happen to you again. Because I don’t know.”

Hikaru sat up at that, so he could move closer to Pavel, and look at him while they talked, even if Pavel kept glancing into his lap. Hikaru’s hand found Pavel’s waist, felt the warmth of his skin where his t shirt didn’t quite meet the top of his jeans. 

“There’s no way for you to know. For either of us. We just have to hope for the best.”

Pavel sighed again. His fingers played with the hem of his jeans above one ankle. He was still staring down at his lap. 

“I know. I’m sure once we’re on the ship I’ll be too busy to think about it. But right now I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Hikaru put his free hand at the back of Pavel’s neck, not to force him to move or to look up or to say anything else, but just to remind him that he was there. He let his thumb trace lazily at that soft patch of skin behind his ear. Finally Pavel lifted his head just a little, looking up at him with what must have been uncertainty written all over his face. It just didn’t feel right, seeing Pavel like this, when he was usually so sure of himself and so happy to be going into space again. But Hikaru knew that Pavel needed to get this out, that he had most likely been holding it all in for a while. 

“Are you worried?” Pavel asked quietly, “After what happened to you. Did it make you any more afraid.”

“No.”

“Really?”

Hikaru nodded. Pavel looked like he might not believe him. So Hikaru scooted even closer, kept his hand tight around Pavel’s waist, and touched their foreheads together, like maybe he could push his thoughts from his own brain into Pavel’s. 

“It didn’t make me afraid,” he started, “because you were there. And maybe if I was going into space without you I would have a reason to worry. But as long as you’re next to me at the helm I’m sure I’ll be fine. 

“Hmm.”

“Or at least with you there I’ll be distracted from whatever it is I’m supposed to be afraid of.”

Pavel laughed a little bit, but his hands were coming to Hikaru’s knees where he sat cross-legged in front of him, keeping them connected at every possible point. 

“Because I drive you crazy?”

Hikaru felt himself smiling so wide that his cheeks might hurt later. 

“Something like that.”

 

_ end.  _


End file.
